Showing posts with label best. Show all posts
Showing posts with label best. Show all posts

29 January 2014

Wishing you the best


by Robert Lopresti

Move aside, Oscar!  Fie on thee, Edgar!  Make room for the real awards. For the fifth year I am listing the best detective short stories of the year as determined by yours truly.

FIfteen stories made the list this time, one fewer than last year.  I am astonished to report that there was a three-way tie between Hitchcock, Queen, and The Strand, with four stories each.  The other three came from anthologies from three different publishers.  

Three of the stories are historical.  Three are humorous.  One is a first story.  By main character we have:

Detective 6
Criminal 5
Victim 1
Other 3

And here are the lucky winners.  They can pick up their gift bags in the green room.

"I Am Not Fluffy," by Liza Cody, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 2013.

I worked as a hostess and greeter at a bar-restaurant six nights a week for five years while Harvey qualified to be a tax lawyer.  And for two nights a week Harvey was going round to Alicia's flat to bounce her bones.  "You were never there," he complained.  "What was I supposed to do all by myself every night?"

What indeed.  Insult to injury: Alicia was an old friend of hers.  And now that Harvey is making a bundle he wants a no-fault divorce and a big white wedding to his new love.

Our narrator goes for textbook passive-aggressive tactics: refusing to sign the divorce papers.   And she begins writing her polite protests against the world around her in chalk on the sidewalk, signing them Fluffy.

Is this a story about a nervous breakdown?  A split personality?  Or is our heroine learning to not be Fluffy anymore, to be a person who can take care of herself?

"The Sequel," by Jeffrey Deaver, in The Strand Magazine, November-February 2012-2013.


Frederick Lowell is an elderly literary agent and one day he gets a letter that hints that one of his deceased clients wrote a sequel to his classic novel.  Lowell travels around the country in pursuit of it and - well, a lot of things happen.  In fact, it almost feels like Deaver made a list of every way this story could work out and then rang  the changes, covering every possibility.

In the first half of the story he gives us a classic quest structure but when that ends we get a mystery, one with several red herring solutions, clever reversals and unexpected twists.

"Margo and the Silver Cane," by Terence Faherty, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, January/February  2013.

My fellow SleuthSayer, Terence Faherty, is the only author making a second appearance on my list this year.   

In the days before Pearl Harbor Margo Banning is an ambitious career woman, working as associate producer on a Sunday radio show.  One of the stars is Philip St,  Pierre, a self-proclaimed "radio detective."  And in this week's show he announces that next week he will be revealing the identity of a top German spy.  What follows is a lot of fun and amusingly written.  Take this conversation regarding one of the other performers on the radio show.

"You are not a radio detective?"
"That question takes us into the realm of philosophy.  Or do I mean psychology?  Are we who we decide to be or who the world tells us to be?  For example, I work with a woman who has forced her will upon the world.  She's become a former Broadway star despite the inconvenience of never having been a current one."
"Mamie Gallagher," Edelweiss said a little wistfully.  "She has a very attractive voice.  I imagine her blonde."
"So does she."


"Restraint" by Alison Gaylin, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2013.

When the woman who killed Kevin Murphy's daughter walked into Cumberland Farms to pay for her gas, the first thing Kevin noticed about her was the way she crumpled her money.

Got your attention?  I thought it would.  And the ending is no slouch either.  But in between you will slowly learn about what happened to Murphy's daughter -- none of the obvious things that might pop into your head  -- and about the revenge Murphy plans.  Again, that is a long way from obvious.  It is not bloody or particularly violent, but it will shock you.


"The Confidante," by Diana Dixon Healy, in Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold, edited by Mark Ammons, Katherine Fast, Barbara Ross, and Leslie Wheeler, Level Best Books, 2013.


Peggy is a mousy young woman who works for a presidential campaign. She is flattered when the more vibrant worker Kim takes an interest in her.  They start meeting regularly and Kim begins to tell her secrets, secrets that could change political history...

Some lovely twists in this one.

"The Murderer At The Cabin," by Robert Holt, in All Hallow's Evil, edited by Sarah E. Glenn, Mystery and Horror, LLC.


 Lexington is a very bad fella.   He's a serial killer with a complicated system of picking his victims and a suitably insane motive.  As the story starts he is looking for a new person to focus his attention on.  And he finds one in a cabin in the woods where a dozen wealthy people are holding a meeting.  So he takes his hatchet and prepares to single out his first victim.

And here's the twist.  The people in the cabin have paid big money for a high-grade murder theatre experience, complete with elaborate props and make-up.  So when Lexington starts his work they think it's part of the show.  But Lexington doesn't know about the mystery theatre aspect and he is as baffled by his victims as they are by him...


"A People Person," by Michael Koryta, in The Strand Magazine, November-February
2012-2013.

Koryta has given us a lovely little character study about Thor, who has been the hit man for two decades for Belov, who is the head of organized crime in Cleveland.  These two have been through tough times on two continents and, in a business that doesn't  support long-lasting relationships, they seem inseparable.

 The English word for the way Thor felt about killing was "desensitized," but he did not know that it was a proper fit.  Maybe he was overly sensitized.  Maybe he understood it more than most.  Maybe the poeple who had not killed or could not imagine being killed were the desensitized breed.

What could come between Thor and his boss?  Could there, to his own amazement, be a line he could not cross?

"Not A Penny More," by Jon Land, in The Strand Magazine, February-May 2013.

Walter Schnitzel is a loser and a loner.  He is a middle-aged accountant, watching younger men get promoted over his head.

But his life makes a sudden lurch when he takes an old clunker of a used Buick for a week-long test drive.  All of a sudden Walter gets lucky - in more senses than one.  His whole self-image changes as well.

So, is the car magic?  Is it all coincidence?  And, oh yeah, why is this story in a magazine full of crime stories?

"The Queen of Yongju-gol," by Martin  Limón, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,
November 2013.


Martin's fiction is always  set in South Korea.  In this tale  the hero is Roh Yonk-bok, one of the wealthiest men in the country.

But he didn't start out that way.  He was able to get an education only through  money sent back home from his big sister who was working as a bar girl in Yongju-gol, a community that served American G.I.'s, where Koreans were forbidden as customers.  One day his sister disappeared and now, years later, Roh is determined to find out what happened to her.

It is a dark tale, full of betrayal and hard-learned cynicism.

"Canyou trust these people, sir?"
Roh turned to look at his bodyguard.  He was a faithful man -- in fact chosen for that quality -- and competent at his job, but he had little imagination.
"They want money, don't they?" Roh replied.
"Yes, sir."
"Then I have trust.  Not for them but for their greed."

"Othello Revised," by Denise Middlebrooks, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 2013.

This is Middlebrooks' first story, a promising start.

The narrator has just written a mystery novel and his wife recommends he takes it to a professional editor.  The editor turns out to be an interesting person, a real estate agent who reinvented herself in the recession, and she has some fascinating suggestions about the book.  Or what she thinks is the book.

And there we have to stop.  Go read the story.  You deserve a treat.




"Dress Blues," by Chris Muessig, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, October 2013.


Sergeant Nolan, a Marine sergeant, finds himself facing multiple crises.  His wife has left him.  He has to decide whether to re-enlist for another six-year hitch.  And his boss goes off on extended duty, leaving him as the only Corps member to look after a private who has been arrested for murder.  Worse, that private is a Black man and this story takes place in a time and place where that can be a dangerous place to be -- especially if you are accused of killing a white man.

A fascinating tale, and one that told me a lot I didn't know about its time period.

"Footprints in Water," by Twist Phelan, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 2013.


Henri Karubje is a detective in the NYPD and he is called out to help investigate the missing daughter of  a Congolese family.  The relationships between the people, and with their medicine man, neighbors, and priest, are complicated to say the least.

Tangling the matter further is that Karubje is not their as investigator, but as translator.  The lead detective is a newly promoted woman he has worked with when she was on patrol.  The cliche here would be to have them in territorial conflict but Phelan chooses instead to have the new detective looking for more help while Karubje insists on making/letting her run the show. 

Karubje is haunted by his childhood in the genocidal conflict of Rwanda and he makes good use of his memories of that horror to sort out the motives and inconsistencies of the characters.

"A Game Played," by Jonathan Rabb, in The Strand Magazine, June-September 2013.



George Philby is a member of Britain's diplomatic core, stationed in Washington.  He is a quiet, self-effacing man, and his great burden is his name.  Kim Philby was the most famous British traitor in a century, so he is somewhat in the position of a man named Benedict Arnold joining the U.S. Army.  "It made them all think too much, a sudden hesitation in the voice."

And in D.C. it leads to an odd friendship with Jack Crane, an American oil man.  Crane brings Philby out of his shell a bit and the relationship leads to -- well, that would be telling.  But one question this story asks is: Does your name determine your destiny?

I liked this low-key tale better the day after I read it.  Then I read it a second time and liked it more.


"The Samsa File," by Jim Weikart, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September 2013.

Havel, a police detective in present-day Prague is assigned to investigate the apparent murder by poisoning of a young man named Gregor Samsa.  Except - surprise! - Gregor had somehow transformed into a giant cockroach.

This is sort of reverse steampunk, transforming a Victorian plot -- Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, of course -- into the modern era, and a modern genre, the police procedural.  Weikart even offers something that Kafka had no interest in, an explanation for Samsa's transformation. 

"The Hotel des Mutilées," by Jim Williams, in Knife Edge Anthology, Marble City Publishing, 2013.

It's Paris between the wars and our narrator says he is a guy who fixes situations, no details given.  In a bar he meets an American named Scotty, who says he is a writer.  Scotty asks him to talk about the most fascinating person he ever met.  So the fixer talks about a guy he met in World War I.

This is one of the stories where the joy comes in figuring out what's going on.  For me, the enlightment came in three distinct bursts, about three different characters.

28 October 2013

More of the Favorites


More of the Favorite Mysteries of the Century

In case you've forgotten, the 100 favorites were chosen by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association.  The book was published in 2000 and edited by Jim Huang.









1960-1969

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee (1960)
A Stranger in My Grave by Margaret Millar (1960)
The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by John le Carre (1963)
The Deep Blue Good-Bye by John D, MacDonald (1964)
The Chill by Ross MacDonald (1964)
In The Heat of the Night by John Ball (1965)
Cotton Comes to Harlem by Chester Himes (1965)

1970-1979

Time And Again by Jack Finney (1970)
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo (1970)
No More Dying Then by Ruth Rendell (1971)
An Unsuitable Job For a Woman by P.D. James (1972)
Sadie When She Died by Ed McBain (1972)
Dark Nantucket Noon by Jane Langton (1975)
Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters (1975)
The Sunday Hangman by James McClure (1977)
Edwin of the Iron Shoes by Marcia Muller (1977)
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley (1978)
Chinaman's Chance by Ross Thomas (1978)
Whip Hand by Dick Francis (1979)
One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters (1979)

1980-1989

Looking For Rachel Wallace by Robert B. Parker (1980)
Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell (1981)
The Man With a Load of Mischief  by Martha Grimes (1981)
Death by Sheer Torture by Robert Barnard (1982)
The Man Who Liked Slow Tomatoes by K.C. Constantine (1982
 "A" Is For Alibi by Sue Grafton (1982)
The Thin Woman by Dorothy Cannell (1984)
Deadlock by Sara Paretsky (1984)
Strike Three You're Dead by R.D. Rosen (1984)
When the Bough Breaks by Jonathan Kellerman (1985)
Sleeping Dog by Dick Lochte (1985)
When the Sacred Ginmill Closes by Lawrence Block (1986)
Tourist Season by Carl Hiaasen (1986)
The Ritual Bath by Faye Kellerman (1986)
Rough Cider by Peter Lovesey (1986)
The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais (1987)
Old Bones by Aaron Elkins (1987)
The Killings at Badger's Drift by Caroline Graham (1987)
Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow (1987)
A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George (1988)
The Silence of the Lamb by Thomas Harris (1988)
A Thief of Time by Tony Hillerman (1988)
Death's Bright Angel by Janet Neel (1988)
Black Cherry Blues by James Lee Burke (1989)

1990-1999

Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard (1990)
If Ever I Return, Pretty Peggy-O by Sharyn McCrumb (1990)
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley (1990)
Sanibel Flats by Randy Wayne White (1990)
Aunt Dimity's Death by Nancy Atherton (1992)
Booked to Die by John Dunning (1992)
Bootlegger's Daughter by Margaret Maron (1992)
The Ice House by Minette Walters (1992)
Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr (1993)
The Beekeeper's Apprentice by Laurie R. King (1993)
Child of Silence by Abigail Padgett (1993)
The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly (1994)
The Yellow Room Conspiracy by Peter Dickenson (1994)
One For The Money by Janet Evanovich (1994)
Mallory's Oracle by Carol O'Connell (1994)
A Broken Vessel by Kate Ross (1994)
Who in the Hell is Wanda Fuca? by G. M. Ford (1995)
Vanishing Act by Thomas Perry (1995)
Blue Lonesome by Bill Pronzini (1995)
Concourse by S.J. Rozan (1995)
Darkness, Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane (1996)
The Club Dumas by Arturo Perez-Reverte (1996)
A Test of Wills by Charles Todd (1996)
Dreaming of the Bones by Deborah Crombie (1997)
Blood at the Root by Peter Robinson (1997)
On Beulah Height by Reginald Hill (1998)

 I know some of you might complain that your favorite author isn't listed.  Please remember this list was compiled by the mystery bookstore owners or managers or staff. The bookstores were all members of the Independent  Mystery Booksellers Association. And the selections were not necessarily best-sellers. These were the favorites of each store and some members picked on the criteria of "what books would I want to have if I were stranded on a desert island." Sometimes, if the author had a continuing character, then the first in the series was listed, when that author had repeats from more than one store. Another criteria was an author or book was one the bookseller recommended to their customers most often. That was one of the fun things for me in our bookstore...when a customer asked for a new author.  New to them, although the book might have been written years ago. Most mystery readers enjoy an author who had a series and naturally they wanted the first book in the series.

This was a fun project. We owe Jim Huang a big debt. For getting the IMBA members to compile this list and publishing it.

Okay, class, how many to you know and/or have read?

04 January 2012

Nothing but the best


by Robert Lopresti

Happy new year to you and yours and the bicycle you rode in on.  It is that time again.  For the third year running I am going to list the best mystery stories of the year, as defined by one simple rule: I liked them the most.

I regret to say 2011 was 8.5% worse than 2010, as proven by the fact that I only put 15 stories on the list this year, as opposed to 17 last.  When I started reviewing my favorite story of the week at Little Big Crimes I suspected it would make me pickier about which stories made the end-of-the year list, and it turns out I was right.

Go to the stats

But enough idle chatter.  What do the numbers tell us?

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine was the big winner this year, with one-third of the stories.  Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and the Akashic Press Noir City series were tied with three each.  Two more appeared in other anthologies, and for the first time I included stories on my list from e-zines.  That means that two of the best stories of the year were published for free and aren't elligible for most awards.  Amazing.  Oh, another interesting point: two of the winners are first stories by their authors.

In terms of (very loose) categories, we have:
criminal viewpoint 4
private eye 3
victim viewpoint 2
amateur detective 1
legal 1
police 1
other 3

Four of the stories were comic.  Two were historic.  Two were about people with brain damage (and some were about people whose brains don't work that well...)  All were terrific.

But before I launch into them, feel free to tell me in the comments what YOU thought were the best stories of the year.  Even if, God forbid, you disagree with me.

And here are the winners

Allington, Maynard.  "The Appointment."  Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.  June 2011.

As I write up my best-of-the-week favorite I keep a file of the ones that qualified for the best-of-the-year list.  This one wasn't on it.  But today when I went back through the whole year's file I went, "Oh yeah, that one..."  Which is a good sign, isn't it?

Since Afghanistan, I think a lot about death, as if I were being billed for a broken appointment.
If I wrote that nugget of a sentence I would have probably started the story with it. Allington puts it at the end of a long opening paragraph. But it sets the tone, doesn't it?

Danny Malone got back from the war with brain damage that effects his memory and temper. Now he is wandering through Death Valley because someone has been sending him photographs of the park and he thinks, vaguely, that he is supposed to meet someone there.

And meet someone he does. The man wears a hooded parka - in the desert heat - and appears to have suffered severe burn damage.

"Don't you remember me? We met once in Afghanistan. I got to know some of the men in your platoon. I knew your best friend, Robinson. He spoke highly of you."

"Robbie's dead."

"So I heard..."


So who is the mysterious hooded figure? What does he have in mind for Danny? And, more importantly, is the explanation of what happens criminal, psychological, or even supernatural?

The answers come at the end of this elegant, finely detailed story. Allington is a former military man and he writes well about the troubled veteran.

Armstrong, Jason. "Man Changes Mind," in Thrillers, Killers, 'n Chillers. January 4, 2011.

I'm trying to decide whether or not I want to be a serial killer.

I mean, I'll probably just finish up with school and get a good job in management but it just seems like I should be doing something bigger with my life. But I think every young man has this conversation with himself at some point. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather be a superhero. I've had that dream since I was five but there's no such thing as superheroes.

That's the start of this wonderfully quirky tale by Jason Armstrong, which I understand is his first published story. The publisher, Thrillers, Killers, 'n Chillers, described it as flash fiction, and that astonished me because I thought it was longer than that. (When I say a story seemed longer than it was I don't usually intend it as a compliment, because I like short fiction, but in this case I mean the story packs a lot into a small space.)

Which is not to say a lot happens. As the title implies, it is just a meditation inside the character's brain. But the story manages to be authentically funny and creepy at the same time, a good trick, and leave you wondering: is this guy just a not-bright doofus thinking idle thoughts, or exactly the kind of person who goes off the deep end one day?  Definitely worth a read.

Brackmann, Lisa.  "Don't Feed The Bums," in San Diego Noir, Akashic Press, 2011.


Kari has a problem.  Her life is divided into Before and After and what came between those two was a car accident that changed her life, destroyed parts of her memory, and altered her personality.  She's adjusting to her new self, taking care of animals as wounded as she is, and sleeping with two men, one from each half of her life. But eventually Kari discovers that someone is plotting against her, and, as the narrator says "She wasn't what she used to be, but she wasn't stupid."

This is Brackmann's first published story, after one novel.  Once the twists start coming she  keeps them pounding up the beach at you, right to the last perfect sentence, which made me laugh out loud.

Catalona, Karen.  "The Sadowsky Manifesto."  in Mystery Writers of America Presents The Rich and the Dead.  Grand Central Publishing.  2011.

Max Bergen runs a not-too-successful literary agency. One day a pot of gold rolls in over the transom. More literally it is a manuscript from the serial-killer-du-jour, who had just killed himself. The FBI and publishers are clamoring for the book and Bergen stands to make a fortune on commissions.

Of course, there has to be a problem, right? Sadowsky's book is not an angry political rant. It's a science fiction novel, and it's so bad that after fifty pages readers will be rooting for the giant robots to kill the hero. The book is a disaster and there is no ethical way for an agent to make money off it.

But, hey, Bergen is a literary agent. Who said anything about ethics?  I have never heard of Karen Catalona before, but I hope to run into her again.

Crouch, Blake.  “The Pain of Others,” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.  March 2011.

Letty Dobish, five weeks out of Fluvanna Correctional Center on a nine-month bit for felony theft, straightened the red wig over her short brown hair, adjusted the oversize Jimmy Choo sunglasses she’d lifted out of a locker two days ago at the Asheville Racquet and Fitness Club, and handed a twenty-spot to the cabbie.
 
 “Want change, miss?” he asked.
 
 “On a nine seventy-five fare?  What does your heart tell you?”
 
Great language, great concept.  Letty is a woman of convictions, more judicial than ethical, and during the commission of a crime she overhears a murder plot.  It turns out she does care about something besides money.  The results are surprising and darker than I would have guessed (see title).
 
Crowther, Brad.  “Politics Makes Dead Bedfellows,” in  Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.  July/August 2011.

This is the winner of the Black Orchid Novella Award, co-sponsored by AHMM and the Wolfe Pack.  The guidelines for this contest specifically say that "We're not looking for anything derivative of the Nero Wolfe character, milieu, etc," but a soft pastiche of Rex Stout is precisely what they got.  And a good one, too. 

Edna Dugué is a  wealthy private eye in Charleston, South Carolina.   She is also an attorney, and teaches at a college.  “I never pretended that my intentions are honorable,” she tells one visitor, but clearly they are.  Her assistant and the narrator of the story is Jerrelle Vesey, an African-American part-time college student.  When Edna was a public defender she had helped him when he was sent to prison for badly beating two white men who killed his brother.

As the story opens a city councilman arrives to tell Edna that his wife has threatened to kill him.  Not surprisingly he ends up dead and the widow becomes Edna’s client.  What follows is classic Stout territory with Archie – Sorry! Jerrelle – going out to interview half a dozen suspects and bringing the results back to Edna, who figures out whodunit.

Two things make the story a treat.  First is Jerrelle's dialog.  Here he is chatting with the councilman: "I don't hold any grudges.  As a matter of fact, I almost voted for you in the last election.  In the end though I threw my support behind  our neighbor's pet rat, Lester."  I like this guy.   Second, are the set of supporting characters.  For example, Edna's police nemesis is a woman, a friend of Jerrelle's family.  

She was the one who arrested him after his crime, and the one who drove him home after he was pardoned.  And we still haven't met Edna's grandfather who lives in the attic.  

These are interesting people in a world that feels fully developed and three dimensional.  Rex Stout would be proud.   

 Faherty, Terence.  "A Bullet From Yesterday,"  in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. January 2011.

A veteran walks into a Hollywood detective agency in the 1950s and says the gun he brought home from World War II as a souvenir may have killed ten million people - it could be the gun that killed the Archduke and started the Great War.  This story has just about everything I want in a private eye tale - humor, action, plot, and compassion for the way people screw up their lives.  Plus historical detail.
 
Gates, David Edgerley.  "Slip Knot," by David Edgerley Gates, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  November 2011.
 
Mickey Counihan is not a detective, but he is trying to solve a crime. Mickey is a fixer for the Hannah family, an Irish mob in New York in the 1950s. He usually seems less like a main character than the typical hero of a detective story. More like an observer or not-so-innocent bystander. Because his main job is to watch out for the Hannah family's interests, which may call for him to watch what's going on but not necessarily step in. As someone tells him in this story "You don't have a dog in this fight."  Before the tale is over, he very much does.
 
The story is about a pool match, or really about the betting that goes on before and during the match. No one, including Mickey, can figure out who is manipulating the odds, and to what end. Before it gets straightened out a bunch of people will be dead.
 
Gates writes convincingly of dangerous men who expect trouble and know how to greet it. But the main reason the story made this list is the sheer casualness of the last paragraph, that treats a stunning detail as less important than a pool shot.
 
Kaaberbøl, Lene and Agnete Friis   “When The Time Came,” in Copenhagen Noir. Edited by Bo Tao Michaelis.  Akashic Press.  Copenhagen sunset by fifteeniguana
 
The building looked like every other place out here.  Glass and steel.  He’d never understood who would want to live in such a place…. The other brand-new glass palaces were lit up as if an energy crisis had never existed, but there was no life behind the windows.  Maybe nobody wanted to live this way after all…
 
 Chaltu is a very pregnant African woman, desperate to make it over the bridge to Sweden where she can seek asylum and be reunited with her lover.  Unfortunately contractions begin too soon and she is left in an unfinished building in Ørestad.  As it happens three Iranian men have chosen the same night to loot fixtures from the empty apartments.  On discovering 

Chaltu one of them calls the “okay secret doctor,” actually Red Cross nurse Nina Borg, the authors’ series character.
 
 By the time Nina arrives the situations has gotten worse , in the form of a murder.  (This deserted building seems busier than Tivoli Gardens.)  She has to do some fast thinking to get out of the mess.
 

This doesn’t feel like a crime story, in spite of the fact that just about everyone in it is at least technically a criminal.  They are breaking the law, but are they evil?
 
The fact of childbirth has a powerful sway over the characters actions and as long as Nina is managing the labor she can direct the men, but once the baby is born, “Nina’s reign had ended.”   Powerful stuff.

By the way, I took the photo above from our vacation apartment in Ørestad, which is just as grim a neighborhood as the authors describe it... 

Mallory, Michael.  "The Real Celebrities," in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  July/August 2011.
 
Michael and I were buddies when we appeared in Margo Power's Murderous Intent Mystery Magazine back in the nineties.  I seem to recall him mostly writing Sherlock Homes pastiches and nonfiction about Hollywood.  Now he has done a mash-up of sorts: fiction about Hollywood.

Since Marilyn Monroe hardly ever gave me the time of day, her sidling up to me meant that she wanted something. As a rule, Marilyn remained within her own little world, acting as though the rest of us didn't exist...
 
Okay, he's got my attention.  Is this a historic tale about the real Marilyn?  A fantasy?  Is the narrator insane?

None of the above.  The characters are impersonators who pose for tips outside Grauman's Chinese Theatre.   The narrator dresses as Wolverine and is known as Hugh Jackman.

I love stories that open the doors and let us take a peek into one of the many worlds that float around us.  Listen to "Jackman" explaining the service he and his friends provide:
 
For tourists, those of us on the boulevard are the REAL celebrities, the ones you can speak to and pose for pictures with. Those other ones, the figures you see on movie and television screens, they're nothing but illusions.
 
When one of them is murdered our hero feels obliged to try to figure out what happened.  The plot probably won't puzzle you, but the writing contains just the bitter sarcasm you expect from a tale of glitter-land's underclass.
 
"I'm an asshole' [he] said, by way of greeting.
 
"You're in the right town for it."

Mosley, Walter.  "The Trial,"  in Freedom: Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, by Amnesty International. 2011.

Interesting idea. Each story in this book is tied to one of the articles in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (Some articles inspired several stories.)  They aren't all about crime, of course, but Walter Mosley's piece is inspired by Article 7: Equality Before The Law. This is not something his characters feel they have been getting much of. They are African-Americans, residents in a housing complex where drug dealers can get an easy pass from the bribe-taking cops, but more "serious" crimes are punished without much consideration of the issues that caused them.

In this case a drug dealer has been murdered and various community members - his lover, his sometime assistant, the oldest resident, a successful businessman, etc. - have gathered to decide the fate of the confessed murderer.

As the story goes on it goes through fascinating shifts - Was Wilfred the killer justified? Does this group of neighbors have the right to rule on him? Do the courts?  Mosley writes with the easy conversational style of a great mystery writer, but he is discussing deep, deep issues here.   

Parker, Percy Spurlark.  “Sweet Thing Going,”  in  Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.  April 2011.

 The thing about Biter Bit stories is that you can usually see them coming.  Percy Spurlark Parker’s story is about a cop named Rycann who is as dirty as they come, squeezing the petty crooks on his beat for money and sex.  You know he’s going to get his comeuppance, so the question is: how will it happen?

This is where the question of story length comes in.  When I turned to the last page I could see that it was the last page and as I read down I was thinking : there’s no way he can pull off a surprising and satisfying ending in the space that’s left.  Obviously I was wrong or it wouldn't be on this list.

Powell, James.  “The Teapot Mountie Ball,” in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.  March/April 2011. 
 
I am a fan and friend of Jim Powell so I say this with respect and affection: The man is as loony as a Canadian dollar coin.  The average Powell story in a fully realized plot stuffed with wild free associations wrapped around a bizarre central idea that, if they had occurred to most writers, would cause them to swear off late-night enchiladas.

 This particular specimen is part of a series about Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.  But the central concept is this: in order to avoid infiltrators Canadian organized crime has banned members who meet the height and weight qualifications for Mounties.  To foil this strategy the RCMP hires a special squad of undercover agents known as the Teapot Mounties (because they are short and stout, naturally).  The one time these diminutive lawmen can wear their red uniforms is the night of their annual ball.  This year, the regularly sized Sergeant Bullock is present, running the soda stand.  Naturally he stumbles into a fiendish plot…

 So that is the main story line.  Here are some random examples of the free associations that grow up around it:       
* There was a Mountie named “Gimpy” Flanagan who had “sworn never to pull his revolver without drawing blood, an oath that cost him several toes.”       
*Scandanavians underestimate Canadians seeing them as “a frivolous southern people much like the Italians…”       
* The Canadians have sworn to defend the U.S. from an overland attack by Russia, because they knew “that if Mexico ever tried to invade Canada by land, the United States would do the same.”

Mad as a March Hare and twice as fun.
 
Pluck, Thomas.  The Uncleared,   at A Twist of Noir, Friday September 16, 2011.


R. Thomas Brown pointed this one out.

I have a rule about flash fiction (usually defined as under 1000 words). I think it only works if the story needs to be that short. Either it is a simple anecdote (like a joke, a setup and a punchline) or something so unique that it only makes sense as a very short piece (see Jason Armstrong's above).

But Mr. Pluck has made me break my rule. I can easily see this story as the outline for one of those looong broody tales that EQMM loves so much. Instead he fit it on a postcard, and did it with no sense of cramming or shorthand. Quite remarkable.

Here, in brief, is the brief story. When the narrator is in college his parents decide to sell their house. His mother, a brand-new real estate agent, attempts to do so and is found murdered in it.

We learn what happened to the family afterwards, and then there is a twist that is staggering and yet neatly foreshadowed. It all works perfectly and even though it could be told at five times the length, it isn't missing a single necessary detail.  And my, the last sentence...

Santlofer, Jonathan.  "Lola,"  in New Jersey Noir.  Akashic Press, 2011

I didn't think this story was going to make my favorite list.  It felt like a pretty ordinary piece at first.  But stories, like people for that matter, can surprise you.

The narrator is a would-be portrait artist who makes his living preparing stretchers for more successful painters.  One day riding the PATH trains back to Hoboken he becomes attracted to a young woman.  Pretty soon he is obsessed with her, and this is obviously not the first time he has gone down this path.  I was pretty sure I knew where this journey was headed.

Well.  Can't say much more without giving away the store.  Let's just say Santlofer has some surprises in store for his characters, and for us.

A perfect ending is one that leaves the reader saying: "I never saw that coming, but it is the only way the story could have ended."  "Lola" has a perfect ending.

17 October 2011

Speaking of Lists & Series



Recently I discovered a wonderful Internet site that displays the top 100 songs of each decade. I enjoyed traveling back in time, listening to favorite old melodies, even singing and dancing along with some of them. This led to a site about "One Hit Wonders," the songs by artists who had big hits with one song and were never heard from again.

One Hit Wonders exist in the world of literature also. For starters, can anyone name anything else written by Margaret Mitchell? Gone with the Wind is the only work that comes to mind. Same for Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and let's not forget Grace Metalious's Peyton Place.

I didn't find many One Hit Wonder mysteries. Googling 100 Best Mysteries of All Time (there are several lists, including one by MWA in 1995), I found that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, and Robert Chandler were consistently in the top ten, and most authors on the list had written several successful mysteries. I also discovered that some books on that list were ones I wouldn't necessarily classify as mystery. To Kill a Mockingbird appears as number 60, making it one of the few mystery One Hit Wonders, though personally, I've always thought of it as straight literary. (Maybe we need a genre called "literary mystery." And please don't email me about the plot to explain the mystery classification. I almost know that novel by heart; I just never think of it as a mystery book.)


Mary Higgins Clark not appearing until number 50 was a surprise, but she'd probably hit somewhere higher if the list were made now in 2011. Dracula by Bram Stoker came in at number 70 showing what a broad approach was taken on the MWA list. I have no intention of linking the lists nor copying them, but they're interesting and easy enough to Google.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is number one on all the lists I checked. He created the Sherlock Holmes series. Most favorite current mystery writers have series. What's important in a series is an intriguing protagonist involved in tightly woven plots. (Who'd'a thought that?) James Patterson has detective Alex Cross; Patricia Cornwell, medical examiner Kay Scarpetta; Janet Evanovich, sassy Stephanie Plum; Alexander McCall Smith, employees of No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency; Jeffery Deaver, criminologist Lincoln Rhyme; and Sue Grafton, fast, fun detective Kinsey Milhone. (BTW, Grafton is on the list.)
My old friend Mickey Spillane is on the list, too. He created several series characters. My favorite will always be Mike Hammer though he's not someone I'd want to know personally, and, though fascinating, Mickey wasn't at all like Mike when I knew him.

Gwen Hunter, my mentor of long ago, told me my protagonists should never be perfect, but always have weaknesses, either physical or mental. I'd planned to name a few of those until Janice Law's "Desperately Seeking Detectives" a few blogs ago. She said it better than I would have, so to quote Janice, "Of course, every detective needs a weakness and here, again, the profession has been creative. The old broken heart (Lord Peter Wimsey) and alcohol problems (Philip Marlowe) have been greatly expanded. One of Dick Francis's protagonists had a hand crippled from a racing accident. Jeffrey Deaver went several steps better with Lincoln Rhyme, his quadriplegic detective, while Jonathan Lethem gave his Lionel Essrog Tourette's syndrome,
which certainly added an original flavor to the narrative."



In today's society, most readers know their favorite series characters better than they know their next door neighbors. Sometimes readers attend launches and signings as characters from my books. Photo on the left is Charles Waldron as Cousin Chuck and Shannon Owen as Callie.

Fans also know what foods the characters eat and frequently, at library book talks, they serve refreshments of foods from the books. (They're shown on the webpage.) At the McCormick, SC, library, they even prepared a fake, but believable, casket with a floral spray for the speaker's stage. I brought it home with me, and it's in my storage shed.

At the Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, There's a Body in the Car book launch, Barbie Yeo came as Jane– pink glasses, mobility cane, red hair and all. The photo below right is Barbie as Jane and Fran as Fran. So far, no one has appeared at a signing as Callie's dad, but I'm waiting for the day since Callie describes him as "a sixty-ish Larry the Cable Guy."


Why is my mind on series characters today? Because I've begun a new series and am busy developing the protagonist so that I know every facet of her life. Tamar Myers, author of the Magdelena full-board inn (for heaven's sake, don't call it a B&B) series as well as the Den of Antiquity series, told me that she sketches her characters and hangs the drawings around the computer while she writes. With drawing skills limited to pleasing elementary school children, I don't attempt to draw my characters. I do, however, sometimes clip pictures from magazines when I spot my exact mental image of one of my people.

I'll introduce you to my new series stars, Stella Hudson and her daughter Billie Estelle, a few blogs from now. Meanwhile, see if you can guess what Stella's weakness or flaw is. Submit your answer through Comments when you answer the question of the day below. (Yes, there will be prizes, and no, Leigh and Velma can't guess Stella's weakness because I've already told both of them.) When the winners are determined, I'll announce them in Comments and tell how to submit private instructions for me to forward prizes.

Speaking of contests, last spring, I won the Criminal Brief contest for a year's subscription to Pages of Stories Magazine. The Autumn, 2011, issue came out this week, and I've read it start to finish. Let me call your attention to two of the wonderful stories in this issue: Continuation of "Untenable" by our own Leigh Lundin and "The Door Between Mary," a ghost story you need to read before Halloween by my good friend J. Michael Shell. Visit Pages of Stories website to learn more about this magazine which publishes quality fiction from all over the world.

Until we meet again, take care of YOU.


TODAY'S QUESTION:

What did rocker Jerry
Lee Lewis and author
Edgar Allan Poe have
in common?