The five tales in Malum in Se share the theme of evil–sometimes the evil of deliberation and action, some-times the evildoer is only vaguely aware of his or her moral misprision; but more often fully aware and pur-poseful. 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 writ-ten, a larger version of the piece appeared to the author. This was Fortune Island, the novel subse-quently pub-lished 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 Con-science seeks world revenge and realizes that he has become the evildoer. In a pulp fiction pastiche sug-gested by the New York Journal-American columnist Jack O'Brian, Haydn’s Head, two gamblers solve a mystery of inter-national 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.