Sunday, October 6, 2013

Edward D. Hoch (1930-2008)

Author
Born February 22, 1930, Rochester, New York
Died January 17, 2008, Rochester, New York

Edward Dentinger Hoch was born on February 22, 1930, in Rochester, New York. He began writing as a teenager and published his first story, "Village of the Dead," in the December 1955 issue of Famous Detective Stories. Over the next half-century, Hoch added 950 more stories to his credits for an average of one story every three weeks. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine published one of his tales every month from May 1973 to May 2007. Edward Hoch's stories also appeared in Adventure, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Double-Action Detective, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of HorrorThe Saint Mystery Magazine, and Web Detective Stories. His series characters numbered more than a dozen and included an occult detective named Simon Ark. Ark is the investigator in Hoch's lone story for Weird Tales, "Funeral in the Fog," from Summer 1973. Hoch died on January 17, 2008, in the city of his birth.

Edward D. Hoch's Story in Weird Tales
"Funeral in the Fog" (Summer 1973)

Further Reading
Edward D. Hoch in Wikipedia

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, May 1980, with Edward D. Hoch's picture on the cover. In would be inadequate to call Hoch a regular contributor: he didn't miss an issue in thirty-four years.
Hoch was also a writer of science fiction and other fantasy. Here's a science fiction novel from nearly forty years ago, The Frankenstein Factory (1975). 

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

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