The Fruit At The Bottom Of The Bowl, by Ray Bradbury

"The Fruit At The Bottom Of The Bowl" by Ray Bradbury, in The Golden Apples of the Sun.  (1948)

This is the first time  in a year and a half this review has been late.  Stuff happens, but it didn't help that nothing I read this week rang my chimes, so for the third time in a year and a half I have had to resort to my list of fifty favorite stories.  It seemed appropriate to honor the late, great Ray Bradbury.

I think most people tend to remember Bradbury for his inspiring go-to-space stories, and forget that he learned his chops on horror.  There is psychological horror in this little masterpiece, but it is first and foremost a crime story.  In fact, it appeared first in Detective Book Magazine and was reprinted five years later in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine (under the cutesy title "Touch and Go."  Shame on you, Frederick Dannay.).

The protagonist has just gone to another man's home where they had an argument about a woman, and the home owner gets killed.  The protagonist can get away with murder - if he is sure that he doesn't leave any fingerprints behind.  And soon we are in territory that would be quite familiar to Edgar Allan Poe.

The last paragraph is worth the price of the book.

Come Back, Come Back, by Donald E. Westlake

"Come Back, Come Back," by Donald E. Westlake, in Levine, 1984.

Well, it has happened again.  For the second time in fifteen months I haven't read any new stories I liked enough to write about here, so I am going to review one of my all-time favorite stories.

I actually read this one as a teenager in one of those Alfred Hitchcock paperback story collections.  It was my first introduction to Donald E. Westlake, and while I always remembered the story, it was many years before I connected this tale with the author of so many comic crime classics.

In the early sixties Westlake wrote a series of stories about Abe Levine, a New York City cop with one distinguishing feature: he has a heart condition which he quite reasonably fears will kill him.  So each of his cases is colored by this, you might say, existential lens.

Take this story.  Levine and his partner are rushed to a skyscraper where a businessman is threatening to jump off a high ledge.  See the ironic contrast: a young, healthy, successful man who apparently wants to die and Levine, a middle-aged, broke, cop with a heart condition who desperately wants to live.  Can these two guys teach each other anything?

A stunning piece of work and a demonstration of the unusual things that can be done in the name of crime fiction.

Carrot For A Chestnut, by Dick Francis

"Carrot For A Chestnut," by Dick Francis, in Field of Thirteen, Putnam 1998.

(minor spoiler alert)


Well, it finally happened.  I read a lot of stories this week but didn't come across any I liked enough to write about here, so I went to my list of fifty favorite crime short stories and picked one.

Here is something that bugs me: people who hit a grand slam their first time at bat.   Just doesn't seem fair somehow.  Supposedly Sheebeg Sheemore was the first tune O'Carolan ever wrote.  And then there are the first novels that turned out to be the best things the authors ever did.  (That can be thought of as a curse, can't it?)

I hadn't realized until I prepared to write this piece that "Carrot For A Chestnut" was Dick Francis' short story.  Sure, he had been writing for novels for years, but he hadn't tried the short form until 1970 when Sports Illustrated invited him to try his hand - "length and subject matter to be my own choice."

Francis, rather famously, tended to follow a formula in his novels: they were all written in first person, the hero was often a jockey, and was brave, resourceful, and chockful of integrity.  Perhaps it was no surprise that, when considering a short story, he decided to go in a different direction.

Yes, Chick is a jockey.  But his story is told in third person and he is a "thin, disgruntled nineteen-year-old who always felt the world owed him more than he got."   Now Chick has a chance to get a little more, by giving a carrot to a horse in the stable where he worked.  The carrot is dosed with some chemical that will undoubtedly damage the horse's chance at winning a race.  Is Chick willing to betray the people he works with, the people he feels don't treat him well enough?

This is a tale of suspense with a slamming climax.  But the reason the story makes my top fifty is the twist ending that makes everything worse...