The Investigations of Avram Davidson

 

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Dedication

Foreword
: A
VRAM
D
AVIDSON
, M
Y
F
RIEND
, T
HIS
S
TRANGER
by Richard A. Lupoff

STORIES

Introductions by Grania Davis, Richard A. Lupoff, and additional lolligags by Michael Kurland

T
HE
N
ECESSITY OF
H
IS
C
ONDITION

T
HOU
S
TILL
U
NRAVISHED
B
RIDE

T
HE
C
OST OF
K
ENT
C
ASTWELL

T
HE
I
KON OF
E
LIJAH

T
HE
C
OBBLESTONES OF
S
ARATOGA
S
TREET

C
APTAIN
P
ASHAROONEY

T
HE
T
HIRD
S
ACRED
W
ELL OF THE
T
EMPLE

T
HE
L
ORD OF
C
ENTRAL
P
ARK

M
URDER
I
S
M
URDER

T
HE
D
EED OF THE
D
EFT
-F
OOTED
D
RAGON

A Q
UIET
R
OOM WITH A
V
IEW

M
R
. F
OLSOM
F
EELS
F
INE

T
HE
I
MPORTANCE OF
T
RIFLES

Other Books by Avram Davidson

About the Authors

Copyright Acknowledgments

Copyright

 

T
O
A
NTHONY
B
OUCHER

(
A.K.A
. H
ERMAN
W. M
UDGETT
),

F
REDERIC
D
ANNAY AND
M
ANFRED
B. L
EE

(
A.K.A
. E
LLERY
Q
UEEN
),

AND
S
R
. R
ICHARD
G
IBBONS
.

A
VRAM
D
AVIDSON
, M
Y
F
RIEND
, T
HIS
S
TRANGER

R
ICHARD
A. L
UPOFF

T
HE
O
THER
A
VRAM
D
AVIDSON

I
T IS ALMOST
—well, almost as if you discovered that your favorite down-and-dirty, gin-swilling, stogie-smoking, barrelhouse piano player, who performed nightly in assorted saloons and whorehouses, grinding out bawdy jingles on a variety of battered, out-of-tune uprights, each Sunday morning rose and shaved and donned a set of elegant togs and made his way to a great cathedral and there performed sacred songs in praise of God on a magnificent pipe organ.

Or as if you discovered that your favorite poet, a spinner of the most delicate, frangible imagery with a shimmering, subtle technique, had a secret passion for writing smutty limericks.

Odder still, as if there was a whole population who knew the musician only for his sacred performances, or the rhymester only for her ribald rhymes—and these persons were as astonished to learn that the musician played piano in honky-tonks or that the wordsmith wrote high-tone verse as you were to discover their “other,” secret careers.

So it was with the late Avram Davidson, whom I was proud to call my friend, and whose works continue to astonish and delight me years after his death. So it may be with you.

Avram was acclaimed in the science fiction community (although in fact more of his works are properly classified as fantasies) as a quirky, brilliant, utterly individual talent. A talent who sprang unannounced on an unsuspecting readership with a series of fancies molded in shapes that no one had ever imagined before and painted in colors that no one had ever seen or even suspected to exist.

He is fondly remembered for those stories and novels, but I would venture that not one in three grateful readers of Avram's science fiction is aware that he was a mystery writer as well. Not only that: Avram was a
terrific
mystery writer.

Many writers who build their careers in one field of literature make occasional forays into other realms; these feints are generally followed by quick retreats to familiar territory.

But Avram appeared over and over in the leading periodicals of the field, more than forty times in
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
alone, and as many more in
Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, The Saint Mystery Magazine, Manhunt, Bestseller Mystery Magazine, Shock, Bizarre Mystery Magazine, Keyhole Mystery Magazine,
and
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine,
as well as such out-of-category periodicals as
Collier's, Midstream, Harlequin, Knight,
and
Playboy.
His stories were frequently anthologized, and he won prestigious awards as a mystery writer.

He never published any mystery novels under his own name, which is perhaps why he remains unlisted in major reference books on crime fiction. By contrast, he receives extensive coverage in the standard reference volumes on science fiction. In both cases, Avram was better known for his short stories than for his novels. His short stories were brightly polished and hard surfaced.

But even this point is more clouded and ambiguous than it seems. It is an open secret in the literary community that several writers ghosted for “Ellery Queen” in the latter days of Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee, the ever-squabbling cousins who invented Queen and wrote under the Queen by-line for many years. Among the Queens' ghosts was Avram Davidson, who penned two somewhat quirky “Queen” novels,
And on the Eighth Day
(1964) and
The Fourth Side of the Triangle
(1965).

It should be noted that Dannay and Lee had an unusual way of developing their novels. Starting with a rather minimal sketch, they would fill in more and more details until they reached their “final outline,” a lengthy document that resembled a kind of condensed novel more closely than it did a conventional outline. From this, in the days when they wrote their own books, they would proceed to flesh out the text.

In the days when they used ghosts, the “Queens” still carried out the process from rough sketch to “condensed novel,” with the ghost then providing the flesh. Come to think of it, to be quite fair and accurate, these books might better be called covert collaborations than outright ghost jobs.

A L
ITTLE
B
IT OF
B
IOGRAPHY

B
ORN IN
Y
ONKERS
, New York, on April 23, 1923, Avram Davidson received a conventional education and was attending New York University when he left civilian life to serve in the Second World War. There has been some confusion over the branch in which he served. In fact, he was a hospital corpsman in the United States Navy. In this capacity he was assigned to the Fifth Marine Division in Okinawa, site of one of the bloodiest and most terrible campaigns of the war. He was then detailed to serve in mainland China, and was in Beijing (then Peking) at the time of the Japanese surrender in 1945.

Avram's very first novel,
The Corpsmen,
was based on his experiences in the Second World War. It has never been published in full. The manuscript was rescued from oblivion in the stacks of Texas A&M University by Avram's tireless bibliographer, Henry Wessells. Grania Davis, Avram's onetime wife, lifetime friend, and literary executor, then placed an excerpt (titled “Blunt”) with
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The full text may yet appear.

After leaving the navy and living in the United States for some time, Avram emigrated to Israel and served in the Israeli Army during that nation's war of independence, 1948–49.

He returned to the United States and attended Pierce College in southern California, where he studied the care and breeding of sheep. He traveled to Israel again, hoping to apply what he had learned at Pierce, but his ideas were not warmly received; he returned once more to the United States and shortly commenced his literary career.

He made his publishing debut, as far as is known, with several stories and verse in
Jewish Life
between 1947 and 1949. He also placed stories with
Commentary
magazine, where they appeared in 1952. These writings were Judaic in nature. (For this information and much more I am indebted to Henry Wessells.)

Avram turned to the world of popular fiction with “My Boy Friend's Name is Jello,” a short story that appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
for July 1954. His first published mystery story was “The Ikon of Elijah,” in the December 1956 issue of
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.
Even at this early stage of his career, he wrote with remarkable skill, subtlety, and complexity of character. In their story blurb the editors of
Ellery Queen
said, “Watch Mr. Davidson: he has the gift—the precious gift of words and insight.” The story is told primarily by what the author omits rather than what he reveals—a notable achievement for any spinner-of-tales, no less for one at the outset of his career.

Although I read many of Avram's early stories, it was his first published novel,
Joyleg,
written in collaboration with Ward Moore, that initially made a strong impression on me. If you will pardon a brief autobiographical note, I will tell you how.

The year was 1962. My home at the time was on East Seventy-third Street in Manhattan. My place of employment was a somewhat decrepit office building downtown at Twenty-third Street and what was then known as Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South). I had bought a little paperback edition of
Joyleg
and started reading it one evening as I rode home on the Lexington Avenue IRT.

The book so gripped me that I forgot where I was. Totally engrossed, I finally looked up only to realize that I had ridden past my stop. I left the subway at the next station, walked over to Second Avenue and boarded a downtown bus.

Captivated again by the book, I rode past my stop.

I climbed from the bus and, vowing to avoid further humiliation, set out on foot, paperback book clutched in hand, happily reading
Joyleg.
And after a few minutes, for the third time engrossed in the book, I felt a terrific wallop. The impact sent a shuddering shock through my body. I staggered back, literally seeing stars, dizzy and disoriented, my ears ringing.

Had I been mugged?

Had a taxi jumped the curb and plowed into a mass of pedestrians?

Alas, I had become so absorbed by the book that I forgot to watch where I was going and had stridden headlong into an iron stanchion.

When at last I found my apartment and stumbled into the vestibule my darling wife screamed in alarm. Here was her husband, home from work more than an hour late, dirty, disheveled, far from steady on his feet, and with an ugly blue bruise rising on his forehead.