J. T. Oliver 7 min read

A brunette in a yellow dress steps into private eye Ernest H. Smith's office with a card that reads, once its hidden ink develops, 'Okay for any service.' 'I want you to kill my husband.'

J. T. Oliver's 1952 story is a sharp hard-SF and social-SF tale with a noir shell. Clever, twist-laden golden-age SF. Read it for a story that opens like a hard-boiled detective yarn and turns on a science-fictional secret, where a routine request to kill a husband proves anything but routine.

In its time

Published in 1952, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

7 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).