The Last Brief

A Brief introduction

The peculiar thing about the following collection is that only one of the stories in it has ever been published under the Ed McBain byline, and even that — if memory serves — first appeared under my own name, Evan Hunter, as did several of the other stories. For the rest, I used either the pseudonym Richard Marsten (from the surnames of my three sons, Richard, Mark and Ted) or else Hunt Collins (derived from my alma mater, Hunter College in New York). Since McBain writes exclusively about matters criminous, you may well ask why his name did not appear on any of these stories that most certainly deal with crime.

I wish I knew.

The oversight might seem understandable in view of the fact that some of the stories appeared in print before 1956, when the Ed McBain byline first saw the light of day with the publication of Cop Hater. But many of these stories were written after the debut of the 87th Precinct novels, and still Ed McBain was rudely shunted aside by Hunter, Marsten and Collins, a trio of literary muggers to rival the infamous Totting Hill Triplets (whom I made up this very minute). As a drawing-room detective might have muttered over her knitting needles, ‘It’s all very baffling.’

Is it possible that the reasoning at the time may have gone something like this: Well, this McBain chap writes police novels, so let the shoemaker stick to his last, let’s not confuse the reader by giving him a McBain story that has nothing whatever to do with cops. All well and good, except for the fact that many of these stories do deal with policemen and police work. (Oddly, the only one that McBain’s name adorned before now was not a police story.) Or is it possible that those three hoodlums — Hunter, Marsten and Collins — once commanded higher prices in the literary marketplace than did poor, struggling, honest Ed McBain? Was a venal agent, editor, publisher, all or any of the above, responsible for the malfeasance? If so, is there no higher court to which an appeal can be made? Must Ed McBain, in the face of such despicable strong-arm tactics, continue to hide his light under a bushel for the remainder of his days? Is there no way to rectify what has surely been a gross miscarriage of justice?

There is a way.

This is the way.

You may well argue that using the McBain byline to foist upon an unsuspecting public the crime-related stories that follow is an offence even more heinous than the one perpetrated by those three gangsters whose names I refuse even to mention again. I hope not. I hope indeed that you will enjoy reading these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them (however many other literary thugs may lay claim to that distinction). I am, in fact, rather fond of the little tales that follow, including the one I wrote when I was eighteen years old and serving as a radarman aboard a U. S. destroyer in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. (If you guess Hot, you’re cold.) I also like... but that’s another story.

I promised you a ‘brief introduction’. And so, ladies and germs, I give you, for the first time together anywhere in the entire universe, the one, the only (I hope)...

Ed McBain