There is an obit in the April 7th Washington Post for Roy
Huggins, author of the Chandlerish novel from 1946 THE DOUBLE
TAKE, featuring private eye Stuart Bailey.
Huggins had his greatest success in television creating
"Maverick,"
"Cheyenne," "The Fugitive," "Run For Your Life," and with
Stephen J. Channell
"The Rockford Files." He also created "77 Sunset Strip,"
featuring Stuart Bailey, which launched a wave of TV private
eye programs.
Yesterday when discussing the death of Henry Slesar, I
mentioned having read one of his short stories on the day his
obit appeared. I can now say that I was reading Roy Huggins
on the day his appeared.
I have a complete run (minus one issue of Ellery Queen
Mystery Magazine) and last week I picked up the April 1964
issue because it featured a short novel by Roy Huggins "Death
and the Skylark," which featured Stuart Bailey. I read it and
enjoyed it a great deal. As I was carrying the issue with me
and had several long waits, I read the Slesar story in the
same issue as well as stories by others. Having enjoyed the
Huggins story (reprinted from a 1952 Esquire), I pulled out
his novel THE DOUBLE TAKE, which I have long owned but never
read. That is what I am reading now and it is superb. He was
a good friend of Howard Browne and helped Browne enter the
Hollywood world. I wish there was an alternative universe I
could tap where all the Browne and Huggins novels appeared
that never were written because of the Hollywood
assignments.
Aside from Huggins and Slesar, the other stories I read from
the April 1964 issue are by writers already dead with one
possible exception. There was a wonderful story by Avram
Davidson ("The Cobblestones of Saratoga Street"), an okay new
story by William Irish--Cornell Woolrich ("Steps...Coming
Near"), and a good tale by David Alexander ("One Drink Can
Kill You"). All of those are dead. The one I do not know
about is Robert Twohy. His story in this issue ("Routine
Investigation") was compared by the editor (Fred Dannay) to
the theater of the absurd. It is a delightfully surreal
story. To my knowledge, Twohy never published a novel or a
collection of short stories. If someone knows of one, please
tell me for he was an excellent writer of short stories for
the digest magazines for several decades. I think he debuted
in the 1950s, certainly no later than the early 1960s and I
remember stories by him into the 1980s. He was a very fine
writer and deserves to be remembered.
I hope he is still alive. I hope I don't read his obit
in tomorrow's newspaper.
That April 1964 issue of EQ also included a reprint of David
Ely's Edgar winning short story "The Sailing Club" as well as
new stories by Hugh Pentecost, James Holding and M.F.K.
Fisher. The book review section by Anthony Boucher gave one
of his very rare five stars to THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE
COLD ("...the best serieous novel of espionage...in a good
two decades.") and four stars to GIDEON'S VOTE by J.J. Marric
(Creasy), and to THE CHILL by Ross Macdonald ("The foremost
living writer of the private-eye story in another firm and
full-fleshed novel of character and detection.")
That issue was a bargain for 50 cents even in 1964
cents.
Back to Huggins: both through his early fiction and his
lengthy television career, he had a tremendous impact. He
died in Santa Monica on April 3rd.
Richard Moore
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