Chapter 2 preamble

In a sense, this collection of short stories should be divided into two volumes, containing the first fourteen stories featuring my western detective Ben Snow, so the preface should also be divided into two parts.Today, the Ben Snow figure is owned by two editors - Hans Stefan Sanderson and Irene Sullivan.These two people have very different personalities, but they are both close friends of mine, and they both have a great affection for Ben Snow, a character who should not appear in a mystery magazine. Hans, a long-time editor of mystery and science fiction, published many of my stories in The Journal of Sacred Mysteries (Sacred for short) and Worlds of Fantasy until both magazines ceased publication in 1960.After several months of oblivion, Leslie Chartres, founder of The Divine, signed a contract with a new publisher, and the Holy was reissued in both the United States and the United Kingdom.Hans suggested that I try to write a new series of stories for him featuring a western detective.Thus, Ben Snow came into being, whose name comes from the combination of the detective Ben Helm written by Bruno Fischer and Mr. Snow in the Broadway hit classic opera "Carousel".Much later, Ben's mount was named Oatmeal by Irene Sullivan, editor of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, who knew I admired the work of Joyce Carol Otters.

In the first few stories of the series, Ben was a fast-shooting shooter with perfect marksmanship. He was often mistaken for Billy the Kid because of his excellent marksmanship. In the first adventure story of Ben Snow, he was Been dead for a year.I think both of them were born in 1859, although in his excellent postscript and list of works Marvin Lachman mentions some inconsistencies.The original Stories on the Frontier and The Man in the Lane were both completed and submitted in late 1960 at about the same time.Hans Sanderson bought both articles for the US and UK editions, but for some reason Arrowhead ran first.Now, the two stories are back in proper order.Only a few words have been altered slightly, mainly in Native American languages, because of the contrast with the subsequent stories.

Since the UK edition of The Sacred was released six months earlier than the US edition, most of the early Snow stories were published in the UK first.The series has been critically acclaimed from the start, and the greatest honor of my early career happened at an American Mystery Writers Cocktail Party.At the time, Cornell Wollridge insisted on seeing the author so he could tell me for himself how much he adored the story. When compiling this compilation, one of the issues was the quality of some of the early Ben Snow stories.I believe that "The Flying Man" and one or two others are worth keeping.We originally wanted to include these few stories and later works together.However, each of the seven stories is interesting, and some plot or historical background is very important to this saga.After all, where else would you see Ben Snow solve a presidential assassination or go deep into Mexico?

So we left these seven stories.Read with a little patience for young authors. Between January 1965 and May 1984, no new Ben Snow stories were published.My other series were popular, and in fact I had put Ben on the back burner until, in the spring of 1983, mystery writer John Bauer announced his plans to revive The Journal of Sacred Mysteries.Up until then, I had been writing Chamber of Secrets and Impossible Crimes novels, and a new Ben Snow storyline popped into my head immediately.A steamboat can disappear on the Mississippi just as Conan Doyle and Ellery Queen made trains disappear between stations.

In 1983, I met John Ball at an Edgar Awards week party and broke the good news to him.I could restart the Ben Snow series for Holy.He looked at me and said they didn't want a historical reasoning, just a modern setting.Ben Snow died again. But the disappearing steamboat ruse was too good to pass up.It had to be put into words, and it had to be a Ben Snow story.I talked to Elaine Sullivan, who had become editor-in-chief of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine after Fred Denney's death in 1982.She likes the ruse, and Ben resurfaces.He has been featured in the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine ever since, thanks to Elena and her successor Janet Hawkins, who had a particular fondness for historical reasoning.

Indeed, that's what Ben Snow's story is about -- not a Western, but a historical reasoning.In these stories, readers find themselves solving mysteries in far-flung places like the beaches of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, and a wax museum in Sacramento, California.In addition to the disappearing steamboat, we've also included an old-school locked room murder case centered around a phantom stallion and an early air-conditioner. "The Bell Tolls" is probably the best one, and Eleanor Sullivan's own favorite of her Ben Snow stories. Enjoy it.

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Notes: And many other films as screenwriters.