PULP FICTION
The Hypnotic Killer – Edwin Baird
Despite Kev’s assumption about the cover art, ‘The Hypnotic Killer’ isn’t a novel, but rather the cover story in this Stranger Than Fiction collection of short stories. There’s no date on it, but I think it was published in the late 1930s.
The story was penned by Edwin Baird (1886-1954), an American writer and pulp magazine editor. His is a scant internet footprint beyond being noted for publishing H P Lovecraft stories in the pulp magazine Weird Tales, and for later getting fired when the publication made significant losses under his editorship.
There’s not much to say about this hypnosis-themed offering. So, as befits pulp fiction, I’ll keep this short... Baird sets his tale in Chicago, Illinois, USA, circa 1922, where two cops are on the hunt for a killer after two automobile salesmen are found murdered in weird and grisly circumstances. The man the detectives immediately suspect, who bought a new car from the salesmen the day before, is, indeed, the killer. But THE TWIST is that he did it for REASONS completely unmoored from character, motives, and sense...
But not actually by using hypnosis..? No, I shit you not. This is the story of a pointless double murder to steal the car the killer couldn’t afford, and a couple of red-herrings via his mother and alibi-providing workmates too weak to be worth more of a mention. Instead, after he confesses and is sentenced to death by hanging, the killer... puts himself into… a silent, still, cold, death-like state of HYPNOSIS before being executed. That’s... it.
Fair play to Baird, his writing has that prerequisite Chandler-esque detective novel vibe. But I couldn’t tell the characters plot devices apart and the lack of murder-hypnosis – ripe topic that it is – is unforgivable.
Given the breadth of genres and sensational stories pulp magazine editors and illustrators could choose from, I don’t think we can get excited about a hypnosis-themed story making it to the cover either. Indeed, while ‘scared/alarmed eyes’ is a recurring visual motif in hypnotism, it’s also sufficiently generic for most, if not all, stories in such collections.
You know how old people lament TikTok and YouTube and such like? Because they were wisely whiling away the hours reading Dostoevsky and embroidering onions by candlelight, or whatever, apparently. Well, let us remember that dross like this was proliferate. I’d rather watch funny cat memes while on the loo than read the rest of the stories in this book. And I don’t even like cat memes.
