Joel Townsley Rogers

Rogers' most famous story is The Red Right Hand, first published in 1945 as a pulp novelette in New Detective Magazine,[3][5] and later expanded to novel length and published by Simon & Schuster's Inner Sanctum mystery imprint.[8] The story blends elements of 1920s-era mystery fiction, hard-boiled noir, psychological thrillers and horror fiction, and follows the possibly irrational Dr. Henry Riddle as he attempts to unravel the murder of young newlywed Inis St. Erme.[9][10] The book sold fairly well and was reissued several times in paperback format.[11] In 1951, the book won the Grand Prix de Littérature Policière International Prize, the most prestigious award for crime and detective fiction in France.[12] Anthony Boucher, reviewing the novel in 1945 for the San Francisco Chronicle, praised it highly, calling it a book that "should appear with fair regularity on all future reading lists of the whodunit" and saying that Rogers "has taken the terrible tension of Woolrich-Irish, the fertile plot imagination of Keeler, the technical ingenuity of Christie and the stern deductions of Carr and a timeless twisted stream-of-consciousness narrative method of his own and produced something unique and exciting."[13]

The book continues to be highly regarded by aficionados of the genre, and was reprinted in 2020 as part of Penzler Publishers' American Mystery Classics series, with a foreword by Joe R. Lansdale.[14] Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, praising its "virtuoso mix of terror and fair play" and saying that it "deserves its reputation as one of the best mysteries of all time."[10] The novelette version was reprinted in 2007 by the publisher Ramble House.[5] In his introduction to the 2020 edition, Lansdale praises Red Right Hand as "far more stylistically adventurous than most of the clue-on-clue novels of that era", and as a mystery that transcends its genre, operating as a stream-of-consciousness literary work in the spirit of William Faulkner, and presaging the later work of Jack Kerouac.[9] Charles Ardai, writer and founder of mystery publisher Hard Case Crime, called it "a brilliant, borderline-insane stew of logic and illogic, Swiss-watch plot construction and bald-faced coincidence, and delicious, bone-cracking suspense."[15] The Paris Review named it one of the magazine's favorite reads of 2020.[16]

Cover of the 1923 novel Once in a Red Moon (publisher Brentano's)

Rogers' work, beyond The Red Right Hand, is not well-known today.[9] Besides Red Right Hand, Rogers published hundreds of short stories and three other novels: Once in a Red Moon (1923), Lady With the Dice (1946), and The Stopped Clock (1958, reissued as Never Leave My Bed in 1963). His stories were anthologized in best-of collections in both the detective[17] and science-fiction genres.[18] His story "The Murderer" was adapted into an episode of the series Star Tonight in 1955, starring Charles Aidman and Buster Crabbe.[19]

1923's Once in a Red Moon was a satiric mystery novel. It received mixed reviews. The Dial stated that the book's satire lapses into "burlesque," but admired how Rogers "expands his rhetoric into bombast and his portraits into cartoons; he is a bit long-winded, but amusing and vigorous."[20] The Bookman wrote that, "The author's probable intention was to write a satire on a certain type of modern fiction. Unfortunately the book strikes us as burlesque, and not a very good burlesque at that."[21]

Anthony Boucher praised the flashback-heavy whodunit plotting of The Stopped Clock, calling it "twice as long as the average suspense novel, five times as intricate, and ten times as exciting."[7]

• "Hark! The Rattle!" (Weird Tales, 1923)
• "His Name Was Not Forgotten" (The Saturday Evening Post, 1943)
• "The Hanging Rope" (New Detective Magazine, 1946)[23]
• "The Night the World Turned Over" (Startling Stories, 1952)[24]

• Once in a Red Moon (1923)
• The Red Right Hand (1945)
• Lady With the Dice (1946)
• The Stopped Clock (1958)