Published by Pocket Books 1963
Salvatore Albert
Lombino wrote under several pseudonyms, the most well-known being Ed McBain, creator
of the 87th Precinct series. Evan Hunter was the name he used for
his more mainstream and literary work, this collection included. I state that fact
merely to inform potential readers, not to deter those who have a knee-jerk
reaction to the “L” word. Hunter was an excellent writer, and this is a fine
collection of his short work.
While the stories
lean distinctly in the direction of literary fiction, many of them have at
least one foot in genre. The Tourists
comes awfully close to being a horror tale, we get a little crime with The Prisoner, science fiction with The Million Dollar Maybe, and fantasy in
The Fallen Angel. The 12 stories presented
here are all radically different in tone and subject, and reading them straight
through doesn’t reveal a formula or give a sense of repetition.
The best tale in
the collection is also the first and longest, titled Uncle Jimbo’s Marbles. It tells the story of a young counselor at a
summer camp who, having signed up along with his girlfriend so that they can
spend the summer together, finds himself stranded on the opposite side of the
river from his beloved when the boys camp is quarantined during a polio scare.
The camp becomes obsessed with the game of marbles, specifically winning the
titular ones from Uncle Jimbo, the champion player at the camp. The story is lighthearted and funny, and
eventually quite touching. The tone and voice of the first person narrator
reminded me of Max Schullman’s Dobie Gillis.
This is simply a
wonderful collection of stories, and should encourage fans of McBain to seek
out more work by Hunter.
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