Arthur Vidro has posted on this site a half dozen times over the years. Most often, his pieces have something to do with EQMM, for he is a longtime reader and fan—something we greatly appreciate! He is also the author of several mystery short stories and publishes the thrice-yearly journal Old-Time Detection, which explores mystery fiction of the past. In the summer of 2023, he began reprinting in Old-Time Detection interviews that appeared in EQMM in the seventies and eighties. In this post, he gives us a glimpse of what you’ll find in those interviews.  —Janet Hutchings

I started buying Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine as a kid in 1976.  That was also the year the magazine began publishing interviews of authors.

The interviews were not in every issue.  But they ran sporadically for eight glorious years.  The first one ran in the February 1976 issue, and the last one in its May 1984 issue, when I was a young adult of 21.  You might say I grew up with those interviews.

EQMM still has those issues in its files, but the changing of the guard over the decades has resulted in the magazine no longer knowing anything about the story behind the interviews.

The issues themselves provided no clues.  There were no bylines on the interviews.  Nor a copyright notice.  They were downplayed, not even making it into any issue’s table of contents.  The questioner was identified merely as “EQMM.”

EQMM editor Janet Hutchings graciously gave me permission to reprint any and all of those interviews in a print journal I publish called Old-Time Detection.  But I wanted to know more about the interviews.  Such as whose idea were they?  What person or group of persons had conducted the interviews?  How were the authors chosen?  Why no bylines?  And why had the interviews stopped running?

Janet, who was hired long after the interviews had ended, understandably didn’t know.

So I went ahead and published one of the earlier interviews—of Robert Bloch, from the March 1976 issue.  Bloch is best known today as the author of the novel Psycho, which was adapted and filmed by Alfred Hitchcock.

But the interview tells us Bloch left a much larger imprint in the mystery world.  The interviewer pointedly asked him, “Does it bother you to have that one-book label pinned on you, when in fact you’ve written so much?”

Bloch replied, “I don’t worry about it too much.  Before Psycho I was known as the author of ‘Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper,’ which had been dramatized and put on radio and anthologized to death.  That didn’t bother me either.”

Asked if the main character and some of the events in Psycho had a basis in fact, Bloch explained that yes, he “was living in a small town in central Wisconsin and one day I picked up the weekly newspaper and read about a middle-aged man who had been discovered with a woman hanging in his shed, dressed out like a deer.”  Bloch provided some more gruesome details and even the name of the man who had committed a series of crimes and would become the role model for Norman Bates.

Bloch said that actor Boris Karloff had once pointed out the parallel in their respective careers.  Bloch recalled Karloff telling him, “I had been a member of my profession for 25 years, without obtaining any particular prominence.  Then, suddenly, overnight, I was known because I was identified with Frankenstein’s monster.  I’ll always be grateful to the poor old monster.”

Bloch added, “And I’ll always be grateful to poor old Norman Bates.”

I also told my readers that I have only a fraction of the interview issues, and if they had any, I’d love to read and eventually reprint them. 

So with the help of some readers who have vast or even complete collections of the magazine, more of the interviews have been arriving.

EQMM’s interview of Robert Bloch ran in the Summer 2023 issue of Old-Time Detection.  The Autumn 2023 issue contains EQMM’s interview of Isaac Asimov, who dabbled in mystery although he’ll always be more famous for his science fiction.  Asimov’s interview focused on his 1976 novel Murder at the ABA.

Our next issue will contain an interview of Stanley Ellin, still regarded as one of the greatest short story writers in our genre (whose first fiction sale, by the way, was to EQMM).  Ellin was asked which of his stories does he consider his favorite – and Ellin’s answer will surprise nearly all of us.

As for learning about the interviews, I struck pay dirt when I spoke on the telephone with one of the interviewed authors—Jon L. Breen.  He recalled that in his case the interviewer was Otto Penzler, the famed publisher and founder of The Mysterious Bookshop.

So I tracked down Otto Penzler, who graciously answered my questions.

Yes, Otto had conducted all the interviews.  He also chose the interview subjects.  As for the lack of a byline, Otto recalls, “I had another column in EQMM at the same time which did have a byline, so I assume Fred thought one was enough.  The idea was Fred’s and I had carte blanche about who I could interview.”

Fred, of course, was Fred Dannay, at the time the surviving half of the Ellery Queen writing team.

There were roughly 65 authors interviewed over those eight years.  Think about it—65!  What a valuable resource these interviews are, four or more decades later.  Some of the more familiar names of interviewed authors:  Eric Ambler, Isaac Asimov, John Ball, Lawrence Block, Christianna Brand, Jon L. Breen, Mary Higgins Clark, Stanley Ellin, Robert L. Fish, Dick Francis, Michael Gilbert, Patricia Highsmith, Edward D. Hoch, P.D. James, Peter Lovesey, Patricia Moyes, Robert B. Parker, Ruth Rendell, Donald Westlake, and even Ellery Queen himself (or at least the Dannay half).

To my surprise, all the interviews were conducted in person.  Penzler explained: “Non-New Yorkers came to the city for one reason or another, including the Edgars banquet, or I tracked them down at Bouchercon, or the International Crime Writers Association triennial meetings, or at the London Book Fair, or on a lecture tour, or whatever.”

Penzler today downplays the significance of those interviews.  “They were pretty short and had the depth of spray paint but I loved having the chance to spend time with those writers, especially Eric Ambler and Ross Macdonald.  It was at that interview that I asked him if I could publish his complete Lew Archer short stories and he agreed.”

There is some truth to the “lack-of-depth” label Penzler affixes to the interviews.  On the other hand, a good many of those 65 interviews were spread out over two issues, thus allowing twice as much space to each of those lucky authors.

The bylined column Penzler referred to was called “Crime Dossier,” which covered news in the mystery fiction world (usually from the world of publishing).  It was one feature of the non-fiction section of EQMM.  That section itself was called “Ellery Queen’s Mystery Newsletter,” which included Penzler’s “Crime Dossier,” “Bloody Visions” (on crime films, radio and television fare, stage plays, and even board games) by Chris Steinbrunner, an uncredited “Interview” (such as of Robert Bloch),  and “The Jury Box” (book reviews).

The “Interview” was the only section of the newsletter without a byline or without a copyright notice.  At some point in 1980 the “Crime Dossier” was replaced with “Crime Beat” by R.E. Porter (“reporter,” get it?), a pseudonym used by Edward D. Hoch (though the copyright was in Porter’s name).  Like the column it replaced, “Crime Beat” covered news in the world of publishing.

When the interviews began, John Dickson Carr was the book reviewer for “The Jury Box.”  But his final column ran in late 1976.  Jon L. Breen then took up the column, giving way in 1983 to Allen J. Hubin, who penned the column into 1988, when Breen returned and held the post for an incredibly long and productive span, passing the torch at the start of 2011 to current reviewer Steve Steinbock, with Breen cutting back to two “The Jury Box” columns per year from 2012 through 2016 (May and November) and one a year from 2017 through 2021 (July/August).

Back to “The Mystery Newsletter” that so entranced me in my growing-up years.  After a nine-year run (February 1976 to March 1985), it simply disappeared, along with all its components except for “The Jury Box,” which remained as a standalone feature.

I was disappointed when the interviews stopped.  I’ve always missed them.

Most readers buy Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine for its wonderful detective fiction.  But some of us also want to read about the stories and about the authors and their writing processes.

That’s what the interviews provided.

And now, thanks to EQMM, most of those author interviews will be reprinted in Old-Time Detection.

“I’m happy to see,” Penzler told me, “that they will have a second life.”