{"product_id":"the-night-my-friend","title":"The Night My Friend","description":"\u003cp\u003eMystery writer Edward Hoch’s career has spanned three and a half decades and produced nearly seven hundred stories. His series characters—there are two dozen of them, including Simon Ark, an occult detective who claims to be two millennia old; Ben Snow, a Western drifter and possible reincarnation of Billy the Kid; Nick Velvet, professional thief, who specializes in stealing items of no value; Libby Knowles, ex-cop turned private bodyguard; and Dr. Sam Hawthorne, small-town New England physician and amateur sleuth—are familiar to mystery readers everywhere.\u003cbr\u003e\nThis new collection brings together some of the best of Hoch’s more than two hundred non-series stories. The cast of characters includes Johnny Nocturne, “creator of mood music for the night people”; Emerson, a U.S. government hit man operating in the jungle of post-World War Il Europe; and Harry Gordon, whose wife has an unsettling habit of coming back from the dead.\u003cbr\u003e\nAs editor Francis M. Nevins, Jr. states in his introduction:\u003cbr\u003e\n\"In The Night My Friend you will find a boxing story; a juvenile delinquency story; a prep school reunion story; more than one tale about the aftermath of World War Il…, a fable about a wandering minstrel and his harmonica; and several thrillers with a noir ambience reminiscent of one of the classic TV series of the years when these tales were written, The Fugitive. You will find unusually vivid and visual writing, off-trail settings, complex characterizations, emotions that run deep—in short, a side of Ed Hoch’s literary personality that has escaped most readers’ attention.\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Edward D. Hoch","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43574412148918,"sku":"9780821410110","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0251\/4980\/0541\/files\/9780821410110_539ef061-d929-41f2-96a9-2a2c8d826429.jpg?v=1727083891","url":"https:\/\/combined-academic.myshopify.com\/products\/the-night-my-friend","provider":"Combined Academic Publishers - Mare Nostrum Group","version":"1.0","type":"link"}