P. F. Costello 1 hr 12 min read

Roused by his frantic wife's cries of a burglar, private detective Joe Emerald grumbles that no thief would find anything in a dick's house but bills, never guessing what has really come calling.

P. F. Costello's 1958 story is a wry fantasy and social-SF comedy. Fun, genial golden-age SF. Read it for a light, humorous tale where a hard-boiled private eye's midnight disturbance turns out to be something far stranger than a burglar, in a breezy golden-age romp that crosses detective farce with the fantastic.

In its time

Published in 1958, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

1 hr 12 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Virgil Finlay