Friday's "Forgotten" Books - The Comfortable Coffin

Richard S. Prather was a former WWII Merchant Marine and author of some fifty books, including forty novels and story collections featuring his Tinseltown detective Shell Scott. He served on the Board of Directors of the Mystery Writers of America and received The Eye, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Private Eye Writers of America, in 1986. In 1960, the MWA was ready to publish their 13th anthology and chose Prather to serve as editor.

The result was The Comfortable Coffin, which had the same wisecracking and wacky sense of humor reflected in Pather's own writing. Prather chose the 15 stories to make the reader "smile, and chuckle, and—more than once—laugh out loud." They vary from Robert Arthur's "A Coffin for Mr. Cash," about the supervisor of a crematorium who becomes involved in an intricate plan to steal a fortune; to Stanley Ellin's "The Faith Of Aaron Menefee," about a shady faith healer, later made into an episode of Alfred Hithcock Presents; to Michael Gilbert's "Mr. Portway’s Practice," about an unexpected fall from grace by a staffer at the British Inland Revenue Service.

The chosen stories include a mix of well-known and more obscure (now) authors:

• The Bottled Wife (Michael Fessier)
• A Coffin for Mr. Cash (Robert Arthur)
• The Faith Of Aaron Menefee (Stanley Ellin)
• My Queer Dean! My Queer Dean! (Ellery Queen)
• Your Cake And Eat It (Berkley Mather)
• Squeakie’s Second Case (Margaret Manners)
• First Man At The Funeral (Dion Henderson)
• The Strange Case Of Mr. Elsie Smith (Dana Lyon)
• The Live Ones (Richard S. Prather)
• The Gentleman Caller (Veronica Parker Johns)
• Mr. Portway’s Practice (Michael Gilbert)
• Fin de Siecle (William O’Farrell)
• Kiss Me, Dudley (Evan Hunter)
• To Strike A Match (Erle Stanley Gardner)
• It Wouldn’t Be Fair (Jack Finney)