Fletcher Flora (1914–1968)

“Flora was a writer of substance and style unlike anyone else.” — Ed Gorman

“Flora had remarkable range, successfully producing everything from hardboiled tales to police procedurals to straightforward whodunits to light whimsy to mainstream fiction.” — Bill Pronzini

Fletcher Flora brought a restrained literary sensibility and sensitivity to every story he wrote. His stories that appeared in the pages of Manhunt, Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and a host of others were always special. Some were flat-out good, some were interesting, others wonderful but undefinable. A few I personally consider masterpieces. When writing in the longer form, he was still good, but you had the feeling that when left to his own devices and elegant style of storytelling rather than a big publishing house, he was at his best, more comfortable in his skin. Whether it was a classier style of noir, a straight-up mystery, or a story that defied description, such as In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree, Flora brought something special to the table in the short story-to-novelette-length form. Stories like As I Lie Dead and Two Little Hands from the first Fletcher Flora collection of his shorter work, which is sadly no longer available, bear this out. While this second collection might be just a tick below the first, there is some great stuff here that makes for terrific reading.

Some highlights for me:

When you pick this up — and it’s ridiculously inexpensive — pop immediately over to the final story in the collection. It’s called THE AVERAGE MURDERER. Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in August of 1967, it’s fabulous. In an engaging style that slowly draws you in, this story of two old friends sitting together at the clubhouse after nine holes of golf, discussing a trial in which one was the attorney, the other a juror, is wonderful. I don’t have to have an issue of that digest in front of me to know it had to be the finest story in the August edition.

Then there’s TRESPASSER.

“She was beautiful in black. Even climbing the hotel stairs, flight after long flight upward, she moved with ease and ineffable grace.”

Originally published in the September 1957 issue of Manhunt, Trespasser is a terrific little noir. The novelette begins with an alluring woman in black heading up the stairs to a hotel room. Why isn’t she taking the elevator? We soon discover why, and a lot more, in a tale where not everything is as it first appears. Told by Flora in a smooth and classy style which has sadly gone out of style in favor of over the top brutality, graphic violence, expletive filled pages and narratives filled with unredeemable pukes.

HELL HAS NO FURY goes all the way back to 1953 and the April issue of Dime Detective.

“You’re not thinking well for a lawyer. Like I said, I’m in a frame. It was built by an expert. I’m in it because someone wants me in it, and he wants me to stay there. What do you think would happen if he learned there was a witness who could get me out?” —Hal Decker to Solomon Burr

This crime story/mystery is one sweet ride. Hal Decker is in a jam, so he turns to his old pal, fledgling attorney Solomon Burr for help. Hal’s accused of killing a political bigwig, and the squeaky clean D.A. has a top operative who puts him on the spot at the time of the killing. Hal swears he was never there, and he’s being framed. But when his alibi comes forward, he’s smart enough to know her involvement means trouble for her, and he’s right.

Solomon has a sweetheart of a secretary named Kitty Troop, and a pet spider named Oliver Wendell Holmes (Fletcher referenced him in more than one story — Holmes, that is) hanging around his office, and Kitty plays a big part as Solomon starts shaking the trees. Unfortunately what falls out of them is bodies — and they start to pile up. A trio of dames, all a different hair color, a sketchy eyewitness who seems to have vanished into thin air, and some goons with badges make it rough for Solomon, but Kitty knows an honest cop when she meets one, which may be the key to keeping Sol alive.

This one is an old-time detective yarn where the detective is actually a lawyer. Flora manages to work in several references to Perry Mason, which augment the fun. A fast-flowing narrative, likable protagonists, some good action and self-deprecating humor add up to a great time for the reader in this delicious detective gem that’s a real winner!

Also from 1953 came THE COLLECTOR COMES AFTER PAYDAY, published in the August issue of Manhunt.

“It was the final degradation of a guy who’d never had much dignity to start with.” — The Collector Comes After Payday

Flora takes an unpleasant scenario and makes it so compelling, that despite your better judgement you continue to turn pages, simply because you have to know the outcome of this classily executed yet brutal little noir turned inside out. In another writer’s hands this would have been raw and graphic and distasteful (the only kind of noir modern readers will embrace), but in Flora’s hands the brutality is turned inward, making it emotional rather than physical for the most part.

“Never any luck. He’d even been a loser in drawing an old man — a bas#*rd with a memory like an elephant and a perverted sense of values.”

While not my favorite subject matter thematically, beautifully done and executed.

Then there’s FOR MONEY RECEIVED from the October issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 1964.

Percy Hand has a crummy office overlooking an alley, and it’s raining when he hears a woman’s footfalls on her way to hopefully hire him. She knows Percy is cash-poor, and though she’s heard he’s not a rocket scientist, she’s also been told by someone he did a job for that he’s honest. Her husband’s having an affair, but that’s not the issue; the problem is that the woman is blackmailing him. His wife, who only overheard part of a phone conversation he had with the other woman, isn’t sure exactly what it is that she has, that her husband wants back. Enter Percy…

Percy’s tail job at a meeting between the blackmailer and the woman’s husband doesn’t go as planned, and next thing you know, one of them has turned up dead. I won’t say more, since I figured out fairly early on what was going on, but it was still terrific fun getting there. Flora was a smooth and stylish writer, his wording and description very visual. Henrietta Savage, an About-Town columnist for a city newspaper, adds a real spark to this novelette. Percy’s gal-pal is hiding some hot stuff beneath her bag-lady attire, even if she does have the disposition of a grumpy polecat. She provides Percy with some background information that helps him finally put the pieces together.

I think a lot of readers will be a step or two ahead of Percy in Money Received, but there is nice atmosphere, engaging descriptions, and the well-drawn Percy Hand, which make this novelette well worth a read.

Though perhaps on the minor end of the stories here, SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL is a delicious little confection published in the September of 1965 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. This short story is laced with black humor and just a touch of the macabre to add balance to the sweetness of the morsel.

Prominent parishioner Clara DeForest, in her fifties but still quite attractive, is visited by Reverend Mr. Kenneth Culling. He’s a fine chap, feeling the need to console Clara despite the delicacy of the situation: her husband has cleaned out their accounts and done a runner to Mexico with a platinum blonde. Reverend Culling is a bit surprised by Clara’s pragmatic approach to the situation, especially as she recounts just how much danger she’d been in before her husband ran off with the other woman.

I really can’t say any more or I’ll spoil it for the reader. Elegantly written and constructed, discerning readers might guess early on where this is headed, but Flora makes it so much fun getting there they won’t want to stop reading.

With 21 stories here, you certainly get way more than your money’s worth, and you can’t say that very often nowadays. Highly recommended!… (plus d'informations)

“Flora was a writer of substance and style unlike anyone else.” — Ed Gorman

“Flora had remarkable range, successfully producing everything from hardboiled tales to police procedurals to straightforward whodunits to light whimsy to mainstream fiction.” — Bill Pronzini

It has always been generally accepted that Lieutenant Joseph Marcus, who starred in several nifty traditional police mystery short stories/novelettes, was Fletcher Flora’s only stab at creating a recurring protagonist in his stories. Moreover, it has always been lamented that he had not done the same for Percy Hand, the less than handsome, middling P.I. who first appeared in Flora’s novelette, Loose Ends, published in the August 1958 issue of Manhunt. The release of For Money Received by Wildside Press — a story originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine nearly four years after Loose Ends, in October of 1964 — has me wondering if perhaps, among the over 150 short stories and novelettes Flora wrote for digests such as Manhunt, Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock, Michael Shayne and many others, more Percy Hand stories might eventually be discovered.

Percy Hand has a crummy office overlooking an alley, and it’s raining when he hears a woman’s footfalls on her way to hopefully hire him. She knows Percy is cash-poor, and though she’s heard he’s not a rocket scientist, she’s also been told by someone he did a job for that he’s honest. Her husband’s having an affair, but that’s not the issue; the problem is that the woman is blackmailing him. His wife, who only overheard part of a phone conversation he had with the other woman, isn’t sure exactly what it is that she has, that her husband wants back. Enter Percy…

Percy’s tail job at a meeting between the blackmailer and the woman’s husband doesn’t go as planned, and next thing you know, one of them has turned up dead. I won’t say more, since I figured out fairly early on what was going on, but it was still terrific fun getting there. Flora was a smooth and stylish writer, his wording and description very visual. Henrietta Savage, an About-Town columnist for a city newspaper, adds a real spark to this novelette. Percy’s gal-pal is hiding some hot stuff beneath her bag-lady attire, even if she does have the disposition of a grumpy polecat. She provides Percy with some background information that helps him finally put the pieces together.

I think a lot of readers will be a step or two ahead of Percy in Money Received, but there’s nice atmosphere, engaging description, and the well-drawn Percy Hand, which makes this long short story, or novelette, well worth a read. Hopefully, more Percy Hand stories will turn up soon, because this was a fun read.… (plus d'informations)

“She sat quite still, her only movement the folding of hands in her lap. In her great, grave eyes there was a slight darkening, as if a light had been turned down.” — Homicide and Gentlemen

This stylish short mystery by Fletcher Flora introduced Lieutenant Joseph Marcus and Sergeant Bobo Fuller. We learn that Bobo is not the real first name of Fuller, but it’s what people have called him for so long, no one can remember his actual name. Flora sets the tone of their relationship in this one, which continued in subsequent short mystery stories featuring the aloof but very smart Lieutenant Marcus. It is that aloofness which Fuller perceives as smugness and taking on airs, and it’s one of the reasons Bobo, who is always two steps behind Marcus in figuring out the culprit in these fun shorts, dislikes his superior so much.

Ironically, as they make their way across a golf course by a lake, where a man has been murdered at some point between the hours of midnight and dawn, we learn that Lieutenant Marcus, who grew up poor and is still, on a Lieutenant’s salary, relatively poor, hates golf and all the snobbishness surrounding the rich man’s game. What was the young man doing on the golf course long before it was open — perhaps even before daylight? Why is his jacket a few feet away, lying neatly on the grass? More importantly, who put the bullet in him?

As Marcus begins backtracking the young man, he learns that he shared an apartment with another young man. Within the apartment they share, is a photograph of a lovely young woman that has an almost hypnotic effect on Marcus:

“It was a lovely face. A wistful face. Shaped like a small, lean heart. Big eyes with sadness in them. Passion in them? Passion, at least, in the soft lips set in the merest of smiles. In spite of the suggested passion, however, there was — Marcus groped for the word — a kind of mysticism. He was falling, in an instant, half in love.”

The inscription on the aforementioned photograph, three target pistols, and a strange aura which seems at once very logical to Marcus, but also quite insane, leads him to the truth in this short but atmospheric case for Lieutenant Joseph Marcus. First published in the April 1961 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Homicide and Gentlemen has wonderful descriptions by Flora, and an unusual solution which make this Lt. Marcus outing memorable, despite its short length. Perfect for bedtime or a coffee break. Quality stuff.… (plus d'informations)

Fletcher Flora was one of the great practitioners of noir, mystery and crime stories, but he was versatile enough to lend smoothness and class to other genres as well. Born in Parsons, Kansas, he married in 1940, taught English and History, and coached basketball and track at a high school while his wife Betty became a librarian. He was, according to the Kenneth Spencer research Library at the University of Kansas, serving as Assistant County Clerk in Fulton County, Missouri when he received his draft papers in ’43, and served with the U.S. Army’s 32nd Infantry Division during the war. By the time he was honorably discharged like many other soldiers in 1945, he had a shrapnel injury which would plague him throughout his lifetime.

Fletcher’s writing career began immediately after the war, but by the time he broke out, the pulp magazines were on the wane. Writing novels of his own, including the award winning, Killing Cousins, and later, ghost writing three Ellery Queen stories, he also reportedly wrote over 150 stories for pulp magazines and digests; as the pulp cycle died out, Flora transitioned to digests such as Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Manhunt, Shell Scott, Michael Shayne, and a slew of others. Some of these short stories and novelettes were mysteries, others crime and noir. Still others were, like some of Bradbury’s stories, nearly indefinable. The one thing that binds them together is Flora’s smooth style, and his classy take on the genres in which he wrote.

I’ll Kill For You, for example, is a gem that displays Flora’s restrained literary sensibilities within the noir genre. There’s no blood and gore, no vulgarity, no brutality or graphically disgusting descriptions, no soused, sleaze-bag narrator unworthy of readers' sympathy, and not a true low-life anywhere within miles of this mesmerizing story. What’s more, I’ll Kill For You has an ending quietly and heartbreakingly all the more powerful for the style and restraint Flora uses to tell the tale. I’ll Kill For You is old-fashioned noir, supremely and perfectly executed. It is only “tame,” "lame," and "not noir" to those devotees of the aforementioned type of noir, which was once upon a time considered outlier fringe noir, but has sadly smothered the genre out of all proportion. These narrow and provably ridiculous parameters have in fact, turned the occasional reader off the noir genre entirely — and with good reason.

Raymond Chandler’s protagonist Philip Marlowe had a moral code; skewed perhaps, but very defined; there were lines Marlowe wouldn’t cross, things he wasn’t willing to do — for money, or a woman. And yes, that was noir. Cornell Woolrich never even wrote a hardboiled story, and he had, even among his “Black” titled full-length novels, some happy endings. Yes, that was noir too. To think this makes them, and terrific writers like Fletcher Flora “tame” in our decaying time, or no longer considered true noir, is insulting to their literary legacy, and a rather reprehensible attempt to rewrite the history of those writers, and the entire genre, to fit prevailing tastes — or perhaps lack thereof.

Now, for the individual stories in this Black Cat Thrillogy of Fletcher Flora Stories:

I’ll KILL FOR YOU —

“She didn’t speak or make another sound until her breasts rose finally on a deep, ragged breath that held them for a long moment high and tight against the thin stuff of her dress. They descended on a long, controlled exhalation. I knew then that there was no more danger of hysteria, and I moved around her and beyond the sofa and stood looking down at the body on the carpet.” — I’ll Kill For You

A man is following a woman as I’ll Kill For You opens, and when he follows her up to an apartment, he discovers her standing over a dead body in this stylishly executed but sad noir story. Henry Frost tells the woman to beat it, and calls the cops. Is he a detective, a friend of the victim, or something else? When Lt. Dunn arrives, we learn what Henry is, which only expands the possibilities. Once he’s kicked loose by the cops, he heads home. To say more would ruin this enthralling and ultimately sad noir masterpiece that I had read once before in a Fletcher Flora collection. It was first published in the July, 1953 issue of Manhunt. A stunning achievement.

I’LL RACE YOU —

“You’re real in your universe, and I’m real in mine. The trouble is, we can’t get to each other. We can’t Reach each other. There you are, and here I am, and there’s no way between. There’s no way to get here from there, or there from here.” — I’ll Race You

Loneliness and the disconnect between people is the overriding theme in this story of the lovely high-class doll, Miss Malin, and a bellboy named Fritz, with whom she takes one last stab at connecting before deciding to race him. To say more would ruin this little story.

Upon first reading of this relatively short story I was less than enamored of it, despite how stylishly executed and well-written it was. But it began to smolder in my unconscious until something prompted me to give this short story a second read. Only then did I begin to appreciate how poignant it was, and how many profound tidbits Flora had woven into this lonely little tale. Marvelous, but deceptively so is this story first published in the August 1969 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

IN THE SHADE OF THE OLD APPLE TREE —

“The trouble with Grandfather,” she said, “is that he won’t die.” — Connie

Flora was consistently good, which I’ve always maintained is its own form of greatness, but he wrote more than one absolute masterpiece, and this is one of those. This one isn’t noir, nor can it be categorized simply as a crime story. Filled with whimsy, a quasi-taboo romance between two young people we find ourselves drawn to despite the gradual reveal about their shallow and possibly quite larcenous characters, and the mystery surrounding what came before the opening of In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree, this sublime but nearly undefinable piece of fiction published in Crimes and Misfortunes posthumously, is one no reader is likely to ever forget.

In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree contains not only one of Flora’s most meticulously conceived and executed narratives, but his lovely and elegant gift for description:

“Already the fruit is forming where the blossoms hung, and in a little while, toward the end of summer’s indolent amble, the small red apples will fall in turn to lie where the blossoms lie.”

Flora's gift for dialog is also on display, as he captures this whimsical and flirtatious exchange between Connie and Buster:

“I suppose I had better go up there and check in immediately.” — Buster

“I was about to suggest it. I’ll go along for company, if you don’t mind.” — Connie

“I’d be delighted. Perhaps, along the way, we can trifle for a while in some leafy glade.” — Buster

“It’s entirely possible. I have no special preference for leafy glades, but I am as you know, addicted to occasional trifling.” — Connie

I can’t overstate the memorableness of Fletcher Flora’s In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree, or what a bargain this particular Black Cat Thrillogy is for readers. If you claim you’re not a fan of the shorter form of fiction, reading In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree might just dissuade you from that notion. Like a lot of Fletcher Flora stories I've reviewed, this has my highest recommendation.… (plus d'informations)