Stark House departed from its usual focus on mid-20th century authors when it produced this collection of North African short fiction by Robert S. Hichens (1864-1959) last year. Hichens was a prolific English author, beginning with his first novel published in 1886. He wrote more than fifty novels combining adventure, melodrama, suspense, and romance as well as nine anthologies and non-fiction about the Near East. Many of his novels were staged or turned into films, including The Paradine Case directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring Greta Garbo.

Hichens first visited Africa in his late twenties and was entranced with the culture, so completely at odds with the European traditions he knew. It captivated his imagination and his writing, as this assortment demonstrates.

Snake-Bite and Other Mystery Tales of the Sahara (Stark House, December 2022) consists of a dozen stories previously published in other collections in 1897, 1905, and 1919. They are all set in northern Africa–Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia—most often in an outpost of the larger cities, none of which were Westernized at the time. The insightful introduction by literary critic S. T. Joshi sets the context for the reader.

It’s hard to know how to categorize these tales. Not exactly mysteries but certainly they contain elements of suspense. While the settings and plots are dated, the writing is surprisingly not. The title story is based on the fact that trips of any duration were so dangerous that they were undertaken in groups of travelers. A physician was considered essential to such trips. The main character used that need as leverage to manipulate one particular doctor and his wife into accompanying his convoy because he had amorous designs on the wife.

Another story finds a couple stuck in a rundown watering hole with no viable way to leave, unless a traveler agrees to take them along on his journey. With today’s range of transport modes as well as communication mechanisms, contemporary readers will find that idea impossible but the human motivations in the story are quite recognizable, even a hundred years later and a half a world away.

Many of the tales deal with the never-ending mystery of human psychology, especially in relation to the opposite sex. One story addresses the fascination of a teenager with a much older dancer to the disbelief of the story’s narrator.

These stories are best savored one or two at a time. Those curious to know more will be happy to learn that a number of Hichens’ books have been re-issued in the past 10 or 15 years by multiple publishers.