Truth or Die, by Austin S. Camacho

 "Truth or Die," by Austin S. Camacho, in Scattered, Smothered, Covered & Chunked: Crime Fiction Inspired by Waffle House, edited by Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson, Down and Out Books, 2024.

A few pages into this tale I felt awash in a cozy wave of nostalgia, which is odd since it is not a cozy or nostalgic story. Let me explain.

A century ago a staple of Black Mask Magazine was a tale in which a stranger arrived in a corrupt big town or  small city and started clashing with the resident gang of crooks (or competing gangs).  It takes a while for the reader to figure out whether the newcomer is a good guy or a bad guy - or, this being the world of hardboiled, a good bad guy or bad good one. 

This story begins with Skye getting off a bus at 4:25 in the morning.  She quickly finds an injured man in a dumpster and she pulls him out. Does that make her a good guy? Then she arranges to meet up with the head of one of two rival mobs.  Bad guy?

A nice and suspenseful story.  I was left with one question: Where does the first dead body end up? 

Windfall, by Michael Bracken

 "Windfall," by Michael Bracken, in Scattered, Smothered, Covered & Chunked: Crime Fiction Inspired by Waffle House, edited by Michael Bracken and Stacy Woodson, Down and Out Books, 2024.

This is the tenth appearance here by my friend and fellow SleuthSayer Michael Bracken.

Let me begin by saying of all the anthology themes I've run across this might be the most unexpected.  Admittedly, I have never been in a Waffle House.

Mike, Jerry, and Bill, three old pals, go fishing one day and make an unexpected catch: half a million bucks that fall (falls?) out of an armored car when it's robbed. 

But that kind of money is like fairy gold, hard to hold onto.  Mike keeps urging his friends not to spend conspicuously, but as one of them says "What good is having it if we can't spend it?"

You know what they say about the love of money. They could have added that it's the root of a whole lot of trouble.

I admit that what put this story over the top for me is the clever connection between it and the title of the book.  But you will have to figure that out for yourself.

 

The Grim, by Donna Andrews

"The Grim," by Donna Andrews, in Black Cat Weekly, #165.

This is Andrews' second appearance here. 

What we have this week is a fantasy-detective story.  Not the easiest mashup to make work, but I enjoyed it.

The narrator, nameless unless I missed it, is in charge of spooks in his area and a problem has come up, wouldn't you know it, in the busy season right before Halloween.

A few weeks ago I talked about world-building, and this is another example, although we might call this other-world-building, because we are discussing the rules of the afterlife.  It turns out that the first body buried in a cemetery can't leave it. It becomes the Grim, a fierce black dog which guards the graves and helps new spirits to find their way to the underworld.

For this reason, the narrator explains, wise cemetery-managers bury a dog before they bury other humans.  Because no person is likely to want the job of death-pooch.

In our story the problem is that the Grim at a new cemetery is clearly suffering from job dissatisfaction and is causing trouble.  Our hero has to figure out the cause of Fido's dilemma and find a solution.  

His work is satisfactory and so is the story.

 

 

Shakedown Street, by James D.F. Hannah

 

"Shakedown Street," by James D.F. Hannah, in Friend of the Devil: Crime Fiction Inspired by Songs of the Grateful Dead, edited by Josh Pachter, Down and Out Books, 2024.

 This is the second story by Hannah to appear here.

Beau is a bartender, a retired boxer, and an ex-con.  His big problem is Phil, who comes around regularly to collect his "taxes," which are paid to a gang boss named Swerve.  His second problem is that Leigh, a woman who frequents the bar, is Phil's ex and Phil doesn't take kindly to being exed.  Beau finds himself in the middle, and he gets squeezed.

There is lovely use of language in this one.

When they say you never forget your first time, they don't mean concussions.

 The drinkers are recovering from weekend sins, reciting empty promises like the Rosary, vowing they'll never do again what they did last weekend -- at least until next weekend.  They count on memories to be short, nature to be healing, livers to be regenerative.

Under Hard Rock, by Ed Teja

 "Under Hard Rock," by Ed Teja, in Black Cat Weekly, #164.

This  is a good example of what I call the Unknown Narrator story. The master, though probably not inventor, of the subgenre, was Jack Ritchie who won an Edgar for such a one.  In this type of tale all the reader  knows about the main character (usually the narrator) is what he or other people say about him, and that turns out not to be true.

In this case the narrator makes it clear early on that he is lying to the people he meets but that intrigues you; you  want to know what's really going on. He visits a small mining town and says he is a private eye, hired to find a man named Randall Cook.  But when the owner of the town's only restaurant tells him that Cook died a week before we find out that he already knew that.  So what's going on?

Cook died in a mining accident and it seems impossible that it could have been a murder.  And he had no obvious enemies.  What exactly is our hero hoping to learn - and what is there to learn?

Part of the solution is a little weak in my opinion. (It requires someone to be awfully gullible.) But it was enjoyable and avoided the usual cliches. 

The Hanging Judge, by Dave Zeltserman

 "The Hanging Judge," by  Dave Zeltserman, in Black Cat Weekly, #163, 2024.

World-building is a topic that gets discussed a lot among writers of science fiction and fantasy, but not so much  in mystery.  The assumption there is you are trying to set your story in the world we live in.  (Historical mysteries are different, especially if they are set in the distant past where we have to speculate about how people lived.)

But this story is all about world-building.  Of course, it is a fantasy mystery. Mike Stone begins by telling us "I might be hell's only operating private eye."     

So the world Zeltserman has to show us is hell, but not just any ol' Hades.  It turns out that every resident with a strong enough personality or "enough self-awareness" generates his or her own private hell, and can drag less aware persons into it.

Stone's problem is that he isn't getting any business.  (Well, his bigger problem is that he's in hell, and the worst part of that, he explains, is the monotony.  So having no business is a real drag.)  He concludes that the problem might be that he did a lousy job on an earlier case, and "everything has consequences in hell."  So Stone sets out to determine, this time for sure, who killed his client, a corrupt judge.

No need for me to detail his investigation.  You either enjoy this sort of thing or you don't.  I enjoyed it very much.