The Fiend

Master the 40: The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Of all the commercial genres F. Scott Fitzgerald attempted in his stories (romance, moral tales, even fantasy and supernatural fiction), he was probably least adept at crime writing. That may seem odd considering The Great Gatsby's influence on the gangster tales and film noir and given the fact the crime fiction was racing toward its hardboiled peak when the unfortunately titled "The Fiend" appeared in Esquire in January 1935. Rather than a Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler ode to moral corruption, though, Fitzgerald's short tale of a widower's attempt to destroy the incarcerated killer who murdered his wife and child reads more like a nineteenth-century Hawthorne or Poe tale of obsession and revenge. Even then the final product is a far cry from Criminal Minds, to say nothing of "The Tell-Tale Heart" or "Ethan Brand." We here at the FBI (Fitzgerald Bureau of Investigation) crack open the case of this odd entry in Fitzgerald's canon, taking on the mission impossible of uncovering clues to what exactly our man thought he was doing with this bloody plot, as well as why he included it in his final story collection, Taps at Reveille (also 1935).