Malum in Se: Five Tales

The five tales in Malum in Se share the theme of evil—sometimes the evil of deliberation and action, some­times the evildoer is only vaguely aware of his or her moral misprision; but more often fully aware and pur­poseful. Even so, there is humor in evil. Murder is perhaps the greatest evil, but in the largest sense, it is ridiculous, solving nothing.

Immediately after the story “Legacy” was writ­ten, a larger version of the piece appeared to the author. This was Fortune Island, the novel subse­quently pub­lished by Cherokee McGhee. Malum in Se offers the reader this earlier, shorter, and somewhat different version of the story. In “Manslaughter” a careless and aging party-girl mother inadvertently causes doom while seeking fun. “A Man of Con­science” seeks world revenge and realizes that he has become the evildoer. In a pulp fiction pastiche sug­gested by the New York Journal-American columnist Jack O’Brian, “Haydn’s Head,” two gamblers solve a mystery of inter­national espionage while pursued by a mobster who wants his losses back. In this story evil smiles.

In the final story, a man and woman attempt escape from a statistical, fascist world of the future to “The Devil’s Tavern.”