Hunter and Hunted: The Ed and Am Hunter Novels

Rating:
Summary: Engaging Crime Series
Review: Fredric Brown is one of the best Science Fiction writers, with O'Henry endings, humor, cynicism, with a hard driving plot. I guess his crime fiction has most of these characteristics, but it seems to have less bite. A nice read, but not special like his Sci-fi stuff.

Rating:
Summary: Hunter And Hunted
Review: To have and to hold. That is the first reason to own this book by Fredric Brown. All four of these novels had been incredibly scarce before this blessed omnibus edition; now it's as if some Fredric Brown fan rubbed a lamp, and a genie came out and provided this collection. Finally.

The Fabulous Clipjoint--award winner, first novel by Brown--is the best of this lot. That's odd, because the emphasis is on Ed Hunter changing from boy into man, not on one of Brown's wonky, delightfully sinister puzzles. I had actually read The Fabulous Clipjoint many years ago, and I've always felt it had an aura all it's own.

The other three novels that make up Hunt & Hunted were new experiences for me, and I'm going to mention the negatives before I buoy up enthusiasm with the positives:

The Ed and Am Hunter novels, of which these are four, are not really Fredric Brown's best work. The Dead Ringer, The Bloody Moonlight, and Compliments Of A Fiend bear some resemblance to the true Brown masterpieces, like His Name Was Death or The Screaming Mimi, but something is lacking.

The first thing lacking are...psychokillers! Where are Fred Brown's wonderful, lurking madmen?? Ed and Am Hunter seem to be experts in rooting out killers with rather drab motives; where are the crazies lurking in alcoves, with the gleam of an upraised knife giving away their presence. True, The Dead Ringer features the possibility of a zombie-monkey peering through a window, and The Bloody Moonlight sports a late-night feral growl from somewhere in the vicinity of a shadowy face spotted in the foliage just off a lonely road, but the explanations for these phenomena are not likely to be as memorable as Brown's roster of madmen in other books.

The Dead Ringer is a lively look at carnival life--and Brown certainly knew the slang--but the novel strings out a rather complicated scenario for what turns out to be a simple crime. It is a case of fifteen weird things really only relating to one slightly implausible bit of skulduggery. The conclusion gives a rundown of all the various details that piled up, which collectively point to what has been going on. It's odd, it's unique, but you may find the pleasure is in the getting there, not in the destination.

The Bloody Moonlight is similar to The Dead Ringer in tone, though perhaps not in the specifics. The nature of the brutal murders points to a werewolf, and there's also the guy who thinks he's getting messages from out near Jupiter on his experimental radio--but again, final revelations may not measure up in creativity to some of Fredric Brown's finales in other, nonseries efforts.

I liked these tales, make no mistake. Ed Hunter is a strong narrator, with a penchant for falling in love with all the wrong faces, and reading these books together, and in order, shows that Brown could have main characters grow and develop throughout multiple volumes. There is direction in Ed Hunter's young life; he may not see it, but his creator does. The mysteries are likeable and have that patented Brown otherworldliness that needs some pretty clever explaining in the end, if telepathy, lycanthropy, or ghosts in the night are not actually involved. The problem is, there is a bit of the mundane in the solutions to these Ed and Am Hunter whodunits. I've already blamed it partly on an absence of madmen, but I also know that I've felt more effectively chilled and creeped-out in other Brown stories, especially his short-stories (which is perhaps a slightly unfair comparison, because Brown can work a lot faster in a shorter work, and it always helped).

The final novel featured, Compliments Of A Fiend, is perhaps the most strongly isolated of the four--it feels like none of the others--but this does not totally work in its favour. Ed must find his uncle Am, possibly kidnapped, but then when bodies start turning up, it doesn't look good for Am. I kick myself for not realizing what had happened to Am, so others may not be so easily fooled as I was. Other than that, the novel overflows with too much dialogue, a lot of it repetitive. Ed is always yakking with someone, scheduling an appointment with someone, or getting his own head picked clean by cops or other PIs who are trying to help Ed find his well-liked old uncle. The reader may start to wonder how much of this chatting really has to do with the case. Fortunately, the resolution does help wash away some of that spinning-wheels feel to the narrative--in fact, the best part of the book is arguably towards the end, when Ed retraces his uncle's exact route on the day he disappeared. Plus, Ed Hunter crosses a threshold as he finally has to shoot someone.

Fan of Fredric Brown? Buy this book! Goodness--Compliments Of A Fiend hasn't been in print since the original hardcover, roundabout 1950 (according to Jack Seabrook's book, Martians and Misplaced Clues). But if the publisher does get around to, say, a collection featuring The Screaming Mimi, Murder Can Be Fun, Night of the Jabberwock, and The Far Cry, there will lie the true genius.