Hard Luck Diggings-Jack Vance short story

Hard Luck Diggings-Jack Vance short story

Hard Luck Diggings is a 14/17 page short story that was first published in July, 1948 in the magazine Startling Stories. It features the main character Magnus Ridolph, a private investigator who accepts contracts on other worlds to solve crimes and mysteries. He is hired for a job investigating an off planet mining company where two to three men are being mysteriously strangled every day.  This happens in only at "Diggings B" one of two mining operations.  Three hundred minors are assigned to this digging, but they are being killed faster than they can be replaced. Murders have happened in locked rooms, showers, toilets and other places, always when a man is by himself with no witnesses.  The only creatures on the planet are panthers, four armed apes and rodents, none of which would be able to enter a locked room to kill. The leopards and apes use to kill men at Diggings B until they installed an electric fence to keep them out.  They do not need an electric fence at Diggings A because it is surrounded by extensive underbrush full of thorns.  Ridolph is not only a private investigator but "an eminent mathematician" and uses math and logic to analyze all of the clues. He proceeds with solving the mystery by setting up an experiment that makes no sense to the mining superintendent.  This is an interesting science fiction mystery even though Vance himself was not fond of it.  I’ve read this several times and rate it a 4 “Really liked it.”

 

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled The Complete Magnus Ridolph (1990)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Gadget Stories (2005) part of VIE

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Hard-Luck Diggings: The Early Works of Jack Vance, volume 1 (2010)

Included in the Jack Vance collection titled Light from a Lone Star (1985)

Included in Magnus Ridolph (2017, Spatterlight) MRS (pb)