Fredric Brown was a popular American pulp writer whose work appeared in mystery and science fiction magazines of the 1930s through the 1960s. Hunter and Hunted: The Ed and Am Hunter Novels, Part One reprints four of his mystery novels that originally appeared in the period from 1947 to 1950. The novels included in chronological order in this volume -- The Fabulous Clipjoint, The Dead Ringer, The Bloody Moonlight, and Compliments of a Fiend – feature the uncle-and-nephew detective team of Ed and Ambrose Hunter, the only recurring characters in Brown’s longer fiction. The Fabulous Clipjoint was Brown’s first published novel and is as much a coming-of-age novel as it is a mystery novel. In the book, young Ed Hunter sets out to enlist his Uncle Ambrose’s aid in tracking down his father’s killer. In the process, Ed comes to terms with his upbringing in the slums of Chicago and finally escapes to a new life in the traveling carnival. The Dead Ringer finds Ed and his Uncle Am on the road in a creepy murder mystery filled with vivid descriptions and authentic slang from the bygone days of the carnival. The Hunters take on a job for the Starlock Detective Agency in The Bloody Moonlight, and Ed finds himself alone in a disturbing rural setting that seems to include werewolves and radio signals from the moons of Jupiter. Finally, in Compliments of a Fiend, Uncle Am himself becomes the victim in a race against time. The only clue to solving the mystery of his disappearance seems to be a passage in the works of paranormal investigator Charles Fort. Hunter and Hunted collects the early Ed and Am Hunter novels together in one volume for the first time ever. A second volume is planned that will collect the later novels and stories featuring the Hunters.
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Editorial Reviews
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*Starred Review* Why is one out-of-print crime writer rediscovered and another, equally deserving, left to languish? Why Jim Thompson but not Fredric Brown? The answers to questions like that breed just the kind of bitter irony on which both of these masters of pulp fiction thrived. Thankfully, ambitious small-publisher Stewart Masters has begun a project that could take Brown's name off the unfairly forgotten short list. This volume--part 1 in the projected seven-volume Fredric Brown Mystery Library, which will bring all of Brown's mystery fiction back into print--collects four of the author's Ed and Am Hunter novels (the remaining three will make up volume 2). There are some major differences between Brown and Thompson. Brown is far less a classic noir writer than Thompson; his stories are not nearly as dark and perverse, and his style is far more polished. Brown was a craftsman plying his hard-boiled trade, whereas Thompson was an open wound bleeding on the page.
The Ed and Am Hunter novels star a nephew (Ed) and uncle (Am) who begin as amateur sleuths but eventually become professional detectives. Of the four novels collected here--The Fabulous Clipjoint (1947), The Dead Ringer (1948), The Bloody Moonlight (1949), and Compliments of a Fiend (1950)--the best is the first, in which 18-year-old Ed helps his uncle solve the murder of Ed's father. The setting is a beautifully realized postwar Chicago. Like Hammett, Brown relishes specificity of place as he tracks Ed and Am's peregrinations across the city's North Side slum (now the trendy River North district). Publisher Masters rightfully characterizes Brown as a "little too life-embracing and mischievous" to fit comfortably in the noir category, and both those characteristics are much in evidence here. The streets are mean, but the characters are amiable, and the prose is almost jaunty.
The Fredric Brown Mystery Library deserves the support of all crime-fiction fans. Ed and Am Hunter have been out of town too long. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From the Publisher
From the Introduction:
"After years of laboring for the pulp magazines, Brown broke into hard covers in 1947 with The Fabulous Clipjoint—an unusual mystery that pairs a young man with his uncle as they set out to discover who murdered the young man’s father. When he was writing this first novel, Brown probably never thought of continuing to develop the team of Ed and Ambrose Hunter in further books. But The Fabulous Clipjoint won an Edgar (the mystery genre’s equivalent of moviedom’s Oscar and science fiction’s Hugo) and demand was strong for a follow-up. On the advice of his agent, Harry Altschuler, Brown returned to Ed and Am Hunter with The Dead Ringer, in which Ed joins his uncle in working for the Hobart carnival....
The Hunters became the only recurring characters in Brown’s fiction after the mid-1940s. Between 1947 and 1951, they appeared in five novels; then Brown didn’t return to them until late in his career, with two more novels and two stories. In fact, the last of Brown’s novels published during his lifetime was an Ed and Am Hunter mystery called Mrs. Murphy’s Underpants.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ashes to Ashes,
By Hobbes (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hunter and Hunted: The Ed and Am Hunter Novels (Frederic Brown Mystery Library) (Hardcover)
After all the hoopla over the first volume of Ed and Am novels, once again the writings of Fredric Brown disappear into the vast unknown. SMPL made a big noise about publishing the complete mysteries of Brown in a sequence of volumes that were to begin with this one in 2002. Three years later, after promises made in numerous venues, SMPL has virtaully disappeared, taking this ambitious and long-overdue project with them. And in the interim, nary a word spoken from any source on the topic, least of all this august forum.
So much has been written about the quality and brilliance of Fredric Brown that it scarcely requires yet another treatment at my hand. That Brown is the overlooked genius in the shadow of Jim Thompson and others is news to no one who is paying attention. The deepest mystery is the repeated attempts by publishers more stalwart than SIMPLE and more numerous, to resurrect the writings of the man who almost single-handedly created noir fiction, all of which have fallen on the deaf ears of the masses. Or been swallowed in the machinations of the family estate. Or been mismanaged by vision-less editors looking for the big cash-out. Or whatever. The sad effect of all this is the steady disappearance of brilliant, prosaic Americana written by a mysterious, deeply troubled and ultimately doomed man whose vices were many, whose crimes were (mostly) of the mind, and who had a compelling penchant for nocturnal bus rides. Our world moving forward into the new millenium is the poorer for our inability to preserve the words that so vividly sliced a bit of life out of the guts of our country in the grave early days of our new Empire. His was the world of my grandparents and yours, a world we must always remember and learn from. It is the root cause of our disturbing national psyche today, and Brown serves it up as well as any, and much better than most.
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Four Fine Murder Mysteries from the O. Henry of Science Fiction,
By
This review is from: Hunter and Hunted: The Ed and Am Hunter Novels (Frederic Brown Mystery Library) (Hardcover)
Fredric Brown was best known as a science fiction writer with a flair for the surprise ending. Actually, he wrote more mysteries than he did science fiction. His only series, the Ed & Am Hunter mysteries, ran to seven novels. This volume collects the first four.
"The Fabulous Clip Joint" (which won an Edgar): Ed Hunter's father, an alcoholic printer with a shrewish wife, is murdered on his way home from a late night binge. Aside from an alcoholic witch of a stepmother and an over-sexed younger stepsister (neither of whom he particularly likes) the only family Ed has left is Uncle Ambrose, an itinerant carnival worker that Ed hasn't seen in over a decade. Ed searches out his Uncle Am and together they set off on a quest to find and punish the killer. Under Uncle Am's guidance Ed learns (1) that his father wasn't the mediocrity Ed thought him to be, (2) that he, Ed, is capable of much more than he ever imagined, and (3) who killed his father. "Dead Ringer": In a lateral logic puzzle, the author gives you a set of seemingly incongruous facts forming a "fair play" mystery. If you can fit the facts together correctly, you can solve the mystery. "Dead Ringer" is a lateral logic puzzle. All the pertinent facts are there. You just have to recognize which ones are relevant and the solution is obvious. At least it's obvious after Ed and Am Hunter explain how the facts fit together. A naked midget is found stabbed to death at the carnival. Later a chimpanzee drowns, and finally a child dies. Through the first two deaths, Ed and Am Hunter mind their own business. The third death stirs them to action, and the mystery is quickly solved. They arrive at the solution independently, but Am gets there a little quicker than Ed. "The Bloody Moonlight": Ed Hunter, rookie detective with the Starlock Detective Agency, gets his first solo case. He goes to the country to check out an investment opportunity for a wealthy young lady who's appealing for more reasons than the size of her bank account. He has trouble sinking his teeth into the assignment because of a beautiful girl who isn't what she seems, a disappearing body, and a narrow minded sheriff who shoots first and asks questions later. On his way to interview the inventor, who may be in radio contact with Mars or Jupiter, Ed finds a body with the throat torn out. Ed leaves the body, finds a phone, and reports the crime. When the sheriff can't find the body, he beats Ed up, which makes Ed determined to [1] return the favor, and [2] find the body again. The plot thickens as Ed unravels who killed whom, the true identity of his dream girl, and exactly where those radio signals are coming from. He gets everything sorted out, and then confronts the problem of keeping the sheriff from killing him before he can expose whodunnit. "Compliments of a Fiend": In one of his books on the paranormal, Charles Fort wrote of the disappearance in Mexico of the author Ambrose Bierce. He then mentioned the disappearance (several years later and almost a continent away) of another man named Ambrose, and asked whether there might not be an Ambrose Collector at work. It is against this backdrop that a gentleman calling himself Ambrose Collector telephones the Starlock Detective Agency asking for an operative who had experience with carnivals. Starlock dispatches Am(brose) Hunter, and he falls off the face of the earth. When Ed Hunter begins to miss his Uncle Am, a mutual friend opines that he must have been gotten by the Ambrose Collector. With only this clue to go on, Ed begins the search for his uncle. The investigation lurches along with no apparent progress, but all the while Ed is unwittingly gathering clues. When Ed solves the problem of the missing 45 minutes, the clues fall into place. Now Ed must not only find his uncle, but also survive the discovery.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fantastic!,
By anonymous (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hunter and Hunted: The Ed and Am Hunter Novels (Frederic Brown Mystery Library) (Hardcover)
Fredric Brown definitely doesn't get enough recognition. This particular type of crime story is really well-written and engaging, along with being a good source of odd slang from the earlier part of the 20th century. Truly worth the money and the time you'll spend reading it!
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