When a bus carrying six prisoners is hijacked, it falls to David Piper – “the Manhunter” – to track them down. But unlike most heroes created by Edward D Hoch, he’s going to need more than a single short story to sort things out. As he tracks down the criminals one by one, he starts to see that this is more than a simple attempt to free a prisoner with five others taking advantage… but it’s going to take him six stories to sort things out.

In addition, Father David Noone – is the theme of the collection “sleuths called David”? – encounters a variety of cases, from a religious artefact that sweats to the death of a human cannonball in the circus…

I’m quite a fan of Edward D Hoch’s short stories – hence Crippen & Landru sending me a review copy of this – and I’m aware of the majority of his sleuths, but I hadn’t heard of David Piper, the sleuth of the six Will o’the Wisp stories. They were published in six consecutive issues of Ellery Queen’s mystery magazine and this is definitely the best way to read them, back to back. Or maybe monthly, provided you start at the beginning. Hich does a good job of balancing the needs of the individual short story while maintaining the ongoing plot. The mysteries are clued (although the reader does have to have a working knowledge of medieval weaponry to solve one story) and the finale definitely makes the build-up worthwhile.

I had read a couple of the Father Noone stories before but he was a character who Hoch would occasionally visit over the years from 1963 to 2004. Hoch does a good job of adapting his style to make the notion of a priest as a sleuth important to the story, even to the one set in the circus. These aren’t really major works from Hoch, but they are interesting nonetheless and very good to read back to back.

All in all, this may not be the collection I was hoping for – BEN SNOW! – but it was a really pleasant surprise to discover an unknown-to-me section of Hoch’s work and read the complete Father Noone.

The Will o’the Wisp Mystery is out now in paperback and ebook.