The Sounds of Silence, by Gabriel Valjan

 "The Sounds of Silence," by Gabriel Valjan, in Paranoia Blues: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Paul Simon, edited by Josh Pachter, Down and Out Books, 2022.

It is New York City in 1977, the summer of Sam.  There is a murderer loose; not the Son of Sam.  This killer is targeting Asians in subway tunnels.  Police Detective Joseph Burrow figures out what's going on, largely because of his experiences during the Vietnam War. 

But the war has left him with more than just useful experience: it has damaged his hearing.  Can he can keep his career as a cop wearing hearing aids?  Can he function without them?  What if even they don't help?

A clever story of a man trying to solve a life-and-death problem while coping with his own crisis.

This Night in Question, by Tod Goldberg

"This Night in Question," by Tod Goldberg,in Witnesses for the Dead, edited by Gary Phillips and Gar Anthony Haywood, Soho Press, 2022. 

This is Goldberg's third appearance in this column.

Cecil, the narrator, is a third generation mobster in California.  The police show him a video of his daughter being beaten by an ex-lover, who then takes her and her own daughter away.  

Cecil assumes his child is dead.  The police are searching for the culprit and the child but Cecil has his own investigation to conduct, and it's not limited by any rulebook.  

This is a grim story but it is believable and well-written.

Spiders and Fly, by Gary Phillips

 

"Spiders and Fly," by Gary Phillips, in Witnesses for the Dead, edited by Gary Phillips and Gar Anthony Haywood, Soho Press, 2022. 

This is the second time Phillips has appeared on this site.

A nice suspense story, told in an interesting manner.  We start in media res, to get all fancy, with Cresston running for his life.  Then we see how he got into that mess.  And then what led to that.  After that we return to his desperate chase.

Seems Cresston saw something nobody was supposed to see.  A murder.  And worse, the killers were cops.  Better keep running, pal.

He winds up with a surprising (and surprisingly resourceful) ally.  And then the story takes a turn I never expected.

 

Street Versus the Stalker, by Pam Barnsley

 

"Street Versus the Stalker," by Pam Barnsley, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2022.

A modest little story that gets most things right.

Gina is an inner-city teacher and a genuinely nice person, the kind who makes friends easily with people you and I might cross the street to avoid.

When some of these folks notice a van following her in a suspicious manner they react, much like antibodies to an infection.  But they are busy and not the best organized crowd, so it is not certain whether the good guys will win...

Nice writing, too. Here is a description of the woman who runs a produce store:

Ava rattled off the math for the oranges under her breath, offered a discount, entered the amount in the cash register, loaded oranges into Gina's cloth bag, nudged a box of apples back into place with her hip, held the portable credit-card machine for Gina to swipe, scratched her shin with her running shoe, and tilted her head to watch the street.

No wonder her grandson says she has ADHD.

I enjoyed this tale a lot.

More Than Suspicion, by Joseph S. Walker

"More Than Suspicion," by Joseph S. Walker, in A Hint of Hitchcock, edited by Cameron Trost, Black Beacon Books, 2022.

First of all: great cover.

This is the  sixth story I have reviewed by Walker, and the second this year. 

The place is a small town in Colorado.  The time is just after Pearl Harbor.

Hannah is the projectionist in the town's movie theatre.  She is also the de facto manager since her boss ran off and enlisted.

Supply chain issues leave her running Hitchcock's classic movie Suspicion over and over.  You would not expect it to maintain much of an audience, but one newcomer returns to view it almost every night.  

Darlene's obsession is based on her dislike of the film's ending, in which the husband turns out to be innocent and the wife merely imaging the danger she is in.  "The end is the only part that's a lie.  A pretty lie, but still.  He kills her.  Of course he kills her."

Clearly Darlene has a secret.  It turns out Hannah has one as well - beautifully foreshadowed - and it is one she would love to reveal to Darlene, if she could gather the nerve.  

You won't be surprised that Darlene's past comes calling and the two women have to work together if they want to survive into the future.  A terrific story.

The Other French Detective, by O'Neil De Noux

 "The Other French Detective," by O'Neil De Noux, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November/ December 2022.

My friend and fellow Sleuthsayer, O'Neil De Noux, has series characters at work in different periods of New Orleans history.  Sometimes they will investigate crimes in the same building, a century apart.

In this clever story it is 1877 and police detective Jacques Dugas is in demand because he is one of the few officers in the mostly-Irish force who speaks French.  Galjour, a police inspector from Paris, has just arrived.  He speaks no English but he is seeking a French prostitute who killed the wife of a government official and is believed to have escaped to Louisiana.

Dugas helps the French cop search the city's brothels but things get more complicated the next day when another Frenchman arrives, also claiming to be Inspector Galjour.  Of course, this is long before the days of photo I.D.s and instant indetity checks via the Internet.  And then it turns out that the woman both men are after may be a victim rather than a killer...

A twisty story I enjoyed a lot.

A Rat Tale, by Mark Thielman

"A Rat Tale," by Mark Thielman, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2022.

 Mark Thielman, my fellow SleuthSayer, is having a good year  This is his third appearance on my list in 2022 and his ninth overall, which I believe has him tied at the top.  It is also the second story in this series to make my best-of-the-week list. 

Bernard de Vallenchin is a sixteenth century French attorney with an odd specialty.  Medieval law allowed animals to be tried for their alleged crimes.In this case the farmers of a region are demanding that rats be punished for ravishing their crops.  Our advocate faces penalties if he can't find an adequate defense.

What follows is what they refer to in TV legal dramas as "winning on a technicality," as de Vallenchin embraces the skewed logic that says rodents can be taken to court.  A very funny story, based on an actual case. 

Paying the Ferryman, by E.J. Wagner

 

"Paying the Ferryman," by E.J. Wagner, in Jewish Noir II, edited by Kenneth Wishnia and Chantelle Aimee Osman, PM Press, 2022.

I have said before that my favorite short stories tend to have at least one of these characteristics: great characters, a twist ending, a great concept, or heightened language.

By heightened language I mean that the words do more than get you from the title to the last page.  In effect, they express a world view. This could be  style as flat as Hemingway or as Baroque as Faulkner.

Which brings us to the opening of Wagner's story.

He tells Judith that he loves her. 

They face each other across the butcher'-block counter, the one made fifteen years ago in the first months of their marriage.  She slices sweet peppers for their dinner -- the peppers are bright green, red, and yellow, and she loves the look of them as she slides them into a big white bowl...

He tells her that he truly loves her, and has since they met, but that he -- and here he smiles sadly -- he has fallen deeply, desperately, passionately in live with Hadassah Sharon, the Israeli graduate student he is mentoring, and that he simply can't control his feelings because they're overwhelming.  It is bashert -- predestined.

I skipped a few paragraphs but this gives you some idea of what Wagner is doing.  The rich detail.  The oblivious egotism of the husband.  

Imagine if this story in the more customary style: past tense, with the husband's words in quotation marks.  Some of the magic vanishes.  The story becomes ordinary.

The rest of the story tells how Judith responds to hubby's announcement.  It is a neat tale, neatly told. 

You may wonder why a story in Jewish Noir II has a title referring to Greek mythology.  Well, there are at least two links, as you will see if you read it.  And I hope you do.

 

Do-Ye0n Performs a Cost-Benefit Analysis, by Mark Niemann-Ross

"Do-Ye0n Performs a Cost-Benefit Analysis on a Career Based on Questionable Activities," by Mark Niemann-Ross, in Crooked 2,  edited by Jessie Kwak, Bad Intentions Press, 2022.

Oddly enough, this is the second story I reviewed this month which qualifies as science fiction.  Both are set in the near future and involve a society in which one's access to resources is strictly regimented by one's activities.  

In Thielman's story your ability to progress depends on your perceived good citizenship. In Niemann-Ross's world it depends on what job you can get.

And Do-Ye0n is stuck at Level One because of a screw-up he made at his last position.  His automated job coach tells him he can get a job in "corporate network penetrative testing," which is to say ransomware.  

It is highly lucrative, and legal.  Well, sort of legal.  Unless some agency, or some other entity decides it would be better to make it temporarily illegal...

Robert Heinlein wrote a novella called "If This Goes On--" and that is one of my favorite types of science fiction: the one that extrapolates from what the author sees as a growing trend in our society.  Niemann-Ross has written an interesting example.

The Relentless Flow of the Amazon, by Jonathan Stone

"The Relentless Flow of the Amazon," by Jonathan Stone, in Mystery Writers of America Presents: Crime Hits Home,  edited by S.J. Rozan, Hanover Square Press, 2022.

I have said before that sometimes a story begins so strongly, with fine writing and a clever concept, that by the end of the first page I am rooting for the writer: Don't screw this up.  We have an example of that today.

It is the beginning of the great lockdown, "the time of boxes.  Everything delivered." Annie and Tom,  new to their suburban neighborhood, are getting tons of boxes which they leave in their garage to give the virus time to wander off.

One day they get an Amazon box they are not expecting.  It contains two plastic but clearly real guns.  How the hell did that get delivered?  Why?  Should Annie and Tom tell the cops, trying to explain what happened?  And who wants cops wandering around their house, breathing their bugs on them?

Maybe they can just put the guns away and forget about them. Besides, as Tom points out, it's not like there's any ammunition.

I bet you can guess what arrives in the next load of packages.

Things get wilder and I won't give anything away.  I had a ball.

The Cost of Something Priceless, by Elizabeth Zelvin

"The Cost of Something Priceless," by Elizabeth Zelvin, in Jewish Noir II, edited by Kenneth Wishnia and Chantelle Aimee Osman, PM Press, 2022.

This is the second appearance here by my fellow SleuthSayer. Zelvin has written other novels and stories about the Mendozas, a fictional family of Sephardic Jews, some of whom sailed with Columbus. 

 And this tale combines two generations widely divided by time.  The story begins as a letter from a modern Mendoza bequeathing to her granddaughter the family's most precious treasures: a necklace and the documents proving it belongs to them.  But there is a lot more to her history than that.

Intertwined with this tale is the third-person story of how Rachel Mendoza really acquired the necklace half a millennium ago.  Let's say that both women found their way through considerable difficulties.

My favorite part of the story is Grandma trying to explain life in the 1950s to her grandchild, and especially what it meant for her to marry a WASP.

People say so glibly that two people come from different worlds.  Everyone said it about Foster and me.  I laughed it off.  I had no idea what it meant.  Take "going to Princeton."  When a Jewish boy went to New York went to Princeton, it meant he was exceptionally smart.  He'd competed successfully in academics, athletics, and an array of showy "extracurricular activities," to make the extremely small quota of New York Jews the university was prepared to tolerate.  When Foster Gale Bentbridge IV went to Princeton, it means that Foster Gale Bentbridge I, II, and III had gone to Princeton. Period.

A skillful story with a powerful ending.

 

Future Tense, by Mark Thielman

"Future Tense," by Mark Thielman, in Black Cat Magazine, #57. 2022. 

This marks the eighth appearance by my fellow SleuthSayer, Mark Thielman, this time with a story set in the near future.  I assume it was inspired by this program.

Terran Korb and his pregnant wife want to move to a better apartment in a safer neighborhood.  But that requires more Citizenship Points.  The cameras of the Panopticon are constantly on watch, looking for good and bad behavior.  Pick up litter?  Good.  Fail to smile at your neighbors?  Bad. 

It doesn't seem like Korb will ever score enough points to get what he wants.  But there are rumors about brokers, people who have learned to work the system, and can set you up with the points you need.  But when you make a deal like that there is always a price to be paid...

This story is  a treat.

Banana Island, by Susan Breen

"Banana Island," by Susan Breen, in Mystery Writers of America Presents: Crime Hits Home,  edited by S.J. Rozan, Hanover Square Press, 2022.

This is the third appearance in this space by Susan Breen, and her second this year.  That's a rare thing.

Marly is a scam baiter for the IRS.  I knew there were amateurs doing this work for fun, but are there really professionals?  Cool.  Marly engages with scam artists, ideally to catch them, but at least to keep them busy so they are not robbing the gullible.

 Marly has been spending a lot of time on the phone with a Nigerian who she believes is a con artist, but she can't quite convince him to ask for money.  In fact, he seems a bit of a charmer.  To raise the stakes she tells him about the situation her family is facing: Most of the members live in Long Island City, where homes are shooting up in value. A realtor just made a blind offer of two million dollars for Marly's house.  Her Nigerian pal urges her to take it, of course.

But the family turns out to have bigger problems than the real estate boom.  And as things get more dangerous Marly has a harder time figuring who the good guys are.  I very much enjoyed this twisty tale.

The Golden Coffin, by Emory Holmes II

 

"The Golden Coffin," by Emory Holmes II, in South Central Noir, edited by Gary Phillips, Akashic Press, 2022.

The publisher sent me a free copy of this book.

I occasionally lament the lack of historical mysteries in Akashic's Noir Cities series.  This is a good one.

It's 1935.  Prometheus Drummond, a young teenager, has hopped freight trains from his collapsed home in hopes of living with his Uncle Balthazar, the manager of a high-class Negro hotel in Los Angeles.  His uncle gives him the post of factotum. "That mean, every damn thing I say is a fact.  And if I point to a heap of satchels yonder but the elevator, I expects you to hop up and tote 'em where they needs to go.  Fact-tote-um -- get me?"

Dialog is one of the strengths of the story. Another is the depth of detail Holmes gives us about life in South Central in the time.

As for crime, someone is murdering young Black women. Prometheus discovered one of the victims.  The city and the police force isn't much interested, but a smart Negro cop named Kimbrow has figured out the pattern.  Can they catch the bad guy before he kills again?

I have written enough historical mysteries to know how hard it is to avoid anachronisms but I have to say: according to the Google Ngram Viewer the phrase "media outlet" didn't arrive until decades after the time this story is set in.  But that's about the only criticism I can make of this fine tale.

 

Cold Case, by Bev Vincent

 

"Cold Case," by Bev Vincent, in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Issue 12, 2022.

This is the second story by Vincent to make my best-of list.

I think it might have been my friend Michael Mallory who predicted that an increasing number of mysteries would be set in the pre-cell phone era, because those modern marvels make so many tropes of our field ridiculous.  (It's bad enough for the hero to enter the villain's lair without back-up, but when he can get help just by reaching into his pocket...)

Bev Vincent, on the other hand, demonstrates how you can make use of recent technology (and current events) to build a story.

Roger is a retired chemist living in Texas in the recent record-breaking cold spell.  One frosty morning he finds a dead man sitting on his porch. When the police arrive he refuses to let them into the house, due to COVID fears, which does not endear him to the shivering constabulatory.  So Roger, with plenty of time on his hands, decides to investigate.

Let's try to count the tech involved in this tale: cell phones, Google, Zoom, video doorbells, NextDoor... I may have missed some.  Not bad for a retired guy.

On top of that the story is witty. When a neighbor comes over dressed for the cold weather we get this:

"Is that really you in there?" he asked.

"I can see you," she said. "Undressing me with your eyes."

"That'd be a job," Roger said, hoping she couldn't see him blush.

The story is  a treat.

Deconstruction, by David Dean

"Deconstruction," by David Dean, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2022.

 This is the sixth appearance by my fellow SleuthSayer on this page. 

Bruce is terribly excited to get his first permanent job as an electrician for a construction company.  But problems start piling up.  His coworker/roommate is a pothead who seems to only keep his job because the boss is his uncle.  And then there is a lot of equipment from other contractors going missing.  By the way, whatever happened to the guy Bruce replaced?

From the very beginning you can guess where this story is going but you will enjoy the trip.

For a Better City, by Peter W.J. Hayes

"For a Better City," by Peter W.J. Hayes, in Mystery Magazine, September 2022.

 This is the second appearance in this space by Mr. Hayes.

Charlie is six months out of prison, and six months sober.  He is living in a halfway house and trying to deal with some decisions he regrets.  

Into his life wanders Ivan who is somehow allowed to hang around the halfway house and claims that he wants to help the residents.  But Charlie is wisely skeptical.  Ivan asks him for a favor and he is willing to pay for it, but Charlie realizes there are strings attached.  Nevertheless he figures he has no choice but to say yes.

The strings, when they arrive, are very tangled indeed.  A nice noirish tale. 

Joey Cacuzza Loses His Election, by Thomas Pluck

 "Joey Cacuzza Loses His Election," by Thomas Pluck, in Low Down Dirty Vote 3, edited by Mysti Berry, Berry Content, 2022.

 This is the third appearance in this space by my friend and fellow SleuthSayer.  

Joey is an enforcer for the New Jersey Mafia.  He is also the lover of it's most important capo, Aldo.  And Aldo wants him to kill a masseuse who could reveal some embarrassing facts about him.  

Problem is, Joey is developing something like a conscience.  The cause of this inconvenience is his niece Nicky, a high school student who is what you might call woke.  She has Joey thinking, not only about the issue of killing a guy only because he might cause a problem, but also about Aldo's support for a mayoral candidate  who is a terrible choice.  

Can Joey resolve these issues and stay alive doing it?  Clever stuff.

The People All Said Beware, by Christopher Latragna

"The People All Said Beware," by Christopher Latragna, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2022. 

It's St. Louis, MO, in 1955.  Henry is a professional gambler who works mostly on a steamboat called the Duchess.  One day he learns that the ship will be off-limits on Saturday due, according to rumor, to a mob wedding.

Henry thinks it odd that the management of the ship would close down on the busiest day of the week, so he begins to investigate.

This reminds me of a spy story, although there is not a shred of espionage involved.  Like a classic John LeCarre tale, or a set of matryoshka dolls, each secret exposed only reveals another secret, right up to the end. 

The title is another secret, at least for me, since it is obviously a quotation, but from what?  The answer is perfectly appropriate.   

Blindsided, by Eric Brown

 

"Blindsided," by Eric Brown, in The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Mango, 2022.  

I have a story in this book.

Emma is a successful writer of suspense novels.  She is also blind.  One day a man named Dan breaks into her house.  At first he seems to be  a fanatical reader, a la Misery, but it turns out to be more complicated and scary than that.

I'm not a big fan of straight suspense stories, although this is a good one.  What made this the winner for the week is a very clever trick Emma plays.  I have never seen it used in fiction before, although it is nicely logical.  A clever twist.

Belle and Donna, by Keith Brooke

"Belle and Donna," by Keith Brooke, in The Book of Extraordinary Femme Fatale Stories, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Mango, 2022.  

I have a story in this book.

It has to be a shock to come home and find the police in your house, investigating a corpse.  Now imagine that the corpse is a man you thought was already dead, "[b]ecause I thought I'd killed him years ago."  

Awkward.  That is the situation Donna finds herself in.  Technically she didn't kill Gavin back then, but he left a suicide note blaming her for his final decision.  But now it appears that that burnt body that was discovered all those years ago was someone else.  And it is definitely Gavin lying in her living room.

Hard to explain to the police.  And made awkward by the fact that Donna had a nervous breakdown after the alleged suicide and, well, doesn't remember all the details.  Like maybe where she was when Gavin died?

A nicely tangled tale.

Mr. Moto at Manzanar, by George Zebrowski

 "Mr. Moto at Manzanar," by George Zebrowski, in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, #30, 2022.

I'm not generally a fan of pastiches, by which I mean Author X writing a new story about the characters and in the style of Author Y.  And I say that knowing full well that I made a pastiche my pick of the week last month.  Exceptions happen but they are a hard sell.

I am more positively inclined toward homages, where Author X dives into Author Y's universe and creates something different. Often this involves connecting the fictional world to the one we inhabit.  For example,  Nicholas Meyer more or less started the modern spate of new Sherlock Holmes' tales with The Seven Percent Solution, but he did it by asking: what if Sigmund Freud had analyzed the great detective?

Another example is James Lincoln Warren's clever story "Shakiri," which is based on the fact that army doctors in Afghanistan (like Holmes' friend Watson) were often spies for British Intelligence.  

Now let's look at Zebrowski's contribution. It centers not on Holmes but a different character.

John P. Marquand created Mr. Moto in 1935, specifically to fill the gap left when Earl Derr Biggers's death left the world without new Charlie Chan novels.  Moto was a secret agent for Japan.  He appeared in five novels and half a dozen movies before World War II cast Japan in a different light.

In the current story Moto is real and the novels and movies are fiction based on his actual experiences.  And Zebrowski asks: what would have happened to our hero when the Japanese were forced out of their West Coast homes and moved to internment camps?

This isn't a crime story. It's a stretch to call it a spy story.  What it is is a thought experiment and I enjoyed it a lot.

Storm Warning, by Dana Haynes

"Storm Warning," by Dana Haynes, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2022.

This is the third appearance on this page by Dana Haynes.

Some stories are all about suspense, building slowly up like a weather system.

The main participants in this situation are Jordan and Lizette Birdsall.  Jordan is a wealth Texas oilman.  The insurance company is sending an expert to examine his collection of rare paintings.

That in itself is not the cause of the suspense.  The paintings are everything they should be. But the inspector's assistant is a beautiful blond woman who looks a lot like Lizette did when she first caught the eye of her now-husband a decade before.  And that makes her very uncomfortable.

Another source of tension is the nasty relationship between the two insurance people. But worse is the tornado watch which quickly turns into a tornado warning. Most of the characters retreat to the storm-proof basement where tensions of all kinds escalate.  Did I mention that Jordan keeps his firearms collection down there?          

I did NOT guess where this clever tale was headed.

The Secret Sharer, by W. Edward Blain

 "The Secret Sharer," by W. Edward Blain, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2022.

In the last two years many fiction writers, me included, have had to deal with the knotty issue of Covid.  How do you include it in a story?  You can ignore it, setting the tale in the near past  or (hopefully) near future.  You can include it in passing, with casual references to masks and vaccinations, etc.  Or you can build a story around it.  

Blain's is one of the best I have read in the last category.

Henley teaches English at a boarding school.  Because of the pandemic his students are scattered to several continents and he is teaching via zoom with all the messy issues involved in that technology.  But none of those compared to the catastrophic disaster of  the home of his favorite student exploding during a class, taking the entire family with it.   

There's more to this than meets the eye, beginning with the fact that the boy's parent's seemed to know something was wrong.  So why didn't they act?  And what was the mother's mysterious profession?  Is it possible the father was somehow involved in building the bomb?

The solution is very satisfactory - and wouldn't have worked before the lockdown.

Murder for Sale, by Hunter Liguore

 "Murder for Sale," by Hunter Liguore, in
Mystery Magazine, July 2022.

This is a one-joke story in terrible taste.  I liked it a lot.

I'm not being quite fair.  There is a second joke, at the end.  But the story runs along on its one gag most of the way, getting more and more outrageous as it goes along.

This, of course, puts the reviewer in an awkward spot.  Do I reveal the gag or leave it to the reader?  I will err on the side of caution, which doesn't leave me a lot to say.

Here's what I can tell you about the plot: Obert and Alandra have been hunting for their dream home for two years.  Now they have a new real estate agent and she urges them to hustle over because the perfect place has just come on the market.

You may already suspect what happens next.  You may be right.

But what gives this story its perverse charm is the matter-of-fact way all the characters react to the situation, as if it were the most normal thing in the world.  Is Liguore saying we are numb to certain trends in the world?  Have some situations become so desperate that we don't even recognize that the unusual has become usual?  

Or is it all just a laugh?  

Fletch Goes For a Ride, by Eric Beetner

"Fletch Goes For a Ride," by Eric Beetner, in Back Road Bobby and His Friends, edited by Colin Conway, Original Ink Press, 2022. 

This is the second appearance in this column by Eric Beetner.  

This book is a shared universe anthology.  In this case all the stories are tied together by the same event: legendary getaway driver Handbrake Hardy is dying of kidney failure in Spokane.  Each story includes one of Hardy's friends/enemies/fans reacting to his coming death.

This stories focuses on Fletcher, a man near Hardy's age, and a man in deep trouble.  He owes ten grand to a guy named Ryland and he doesn't have it.  The loan shark sends a punk named Bobby to collect or break some legs. 

But our hero has an idea.  See, this famous driver is dying on the other side of the state and he owes Fletcher money.  If Bobby will just drive him over surely Fletcher can convince the old guy to make a death bed donation.

The yarn is a lie, but it gives Fletcher several hours in the car to think of a way out.  Now it's a matter of youth and strength versus age and guile.  Good luck, Bobby!

A clever story with a very satisfactory ending.

Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, by Brian Thornton

 "Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School," by Brian Thornton, in Lawyers, Guns, and Money: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Music of Warren Zevon, edited by Libby Cudmore and Art Taylor, Down and Out Books, 2022.

My friend and fellow SleuthSayer Brian Thornton has written something unusual and strangely familiar. 

The story takes place during prohibition in a Western mining town. The narrator is an unnamed private detective, working for an equally unnamed agency.  His boss is the Old Man.

If you are familiar with the classics of our field you already know which author is being saluted here (or, if you prefer, ripped off).  It's a good story, although I prefer the more elaborate version of this game that  Evan Lewis did a few years ago.

I suppose the moral is, if you don't give your protagonist a name it is not hard for an other author to borrow him.

Getting back to the story, our nameless hero is spending a week in a brothel, because the agency has heard that a guy they are looking for might drop by.  The target does show up, with a gun, and things get complicated.  I liked the ending a lot.

Chinook, by Thomas King

 

"Chinook," by Thomas King, in The Perfect Crime, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Harper Collins, 2022.

"You used to be a cop," said Al. "So you know one end of the bull from the other."

"And now I'm a landscape photographer," said Thumps. "A hungry landscape photographer."

All Thumps DreadfulWater wants to do is sit in Al's cafe and eat his breakfast but the sheriff of Chinook, wants his help investigating a death.  It happens to be one of those crimes where suspects are all too plentiful.  Sonny Martell was not a nice man.

"Could be someone shot him with a silver bullet," said Duke.

"That's for werewolves," said Thumps.

The sheriff set the parking brake and opened the door.  "Or put a stake through his heart."

"That's for vampires."

Duke nodded.  "With Sonny, it would be best to cover all bases."

The dialog is excellent (when the coroner learns that Sonny is the corpse she says "Somedays I love my job") and the plot makes a convoluted sort of sense.  A lot of fun.

  

Jumping Ship, by Oyinkan Braithwaite

 

 "Jumping Ship," by Oyinkan Braithwaite, in The Perfect Crime, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Harper Collins, 2022.

Ida is a photographer, specializing in baby pictures.  Her boyfriend wants her to take photos of his new baby.  Only catch is, it will be at his house and his wife will be there.  She doesn't know Ida is sleeping with her hubby.

What could possibly go wrong?

It's a creepy story, with Ida full of misgivings about taking a dubious request from a guy who likes to push her boundaries way too much.  And things start to wrong in very weird ways.

By the way, no harm comes to the baby. 

A Murder of Brides, by Sulari Gentill

 "A Murder of Brides," by Sulari Gentill, in The Perfect Crime, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Harper Collins, 2022.

 We're in Australia in the 1920s.  Gus and Harriet make a precarious living as traveling photographers.  They specialize in brides and grooms, but since they only hit a town every few months they are taking pictures of recent newlyweds, not the actual nuptials.  They "advertise a pledge to deliver a wedding portrait while the couple was still in love."

Today a policeman asks them to photograph the scene of a brutal murder.  Fortunately for the cops they have a ready-made suspect, and he's even a Chinese servant.  Who will quarrel with such a simple solution?  Only the photographers see a flaw...

The special treat in this story is the guest who is traveling around with our heroes.  He's a writer and you might say he has a bit of an obsession.  His identity is not exactly a secret, but I won't spoil it for you.   

On Grasmere Lake, by Mathangi Subramanian

 

"On Grasmere Lake," by Mathangi Subramanian, in Denver Noir, edited by Cynthia Swanson, Akashic Press, 2022.

The publisher sent me a copy.

Last week I reviewed a story from this book that was pure noir.  This week, something quite different.  It is a story about women helping each other in a crisis. It is quite literary, but don't hold that against it.

What else can I tell you?  This is a good example of a time when saying too much would be, well, saying too much.

Nithi is a young woman who lives with her mother, Priya, and her father, the brutally abusive Jason.  But now Jason is dead and Nithi feels guilt about that, and about other things as well.  

The situation looks very bad but then it takes an unexpected twist.  And that's really all I can say except that I enjoyed this story very much.

Dreaming of Ella, by Francelia Belton

 

"Dreaming of Ella," by Francelia Belton, in Denver Noir, edited by Cynthia Swanson, Akashic Press, 2022.

The publisher sent me a copy of this book.

 

It is 1956 and Morgan plays trumpet in a nightclub in the Five Points, Denver's home for jazz and African-American culture.  He inherited the horn and his talent from his father, who died young.  HIs mother told him that his dad "was playing the devils' horn and one day the devil would collect his due." 

Well, you can't complain that this story isn't noir enough, can you?

Morgan's great dream is to play some day with Ella Fitzgerald and, wonder of wonders, one night she walks into the club.  She wants to sing a number with the band.  And yes, she may even be in the market for a new trumpet player.

And then a phone call changes everything and Morgan's life begins to skid wildly off the rails.  It seems like the devil may be back for a second helping.

I often wish the Akashic Books' Noir Cities series had more historical tales.  This is a nice one.

Zebras, by Stacy Woodson

"Zebras," by Stacy Woodson, in The Tattered Blue Line: Short Stories of Contemporary Policing, edited by Frank Zafiro, Code 4 Press, 2022.

An epistolary story set in a school  Makes me think of Up the Down Staircase.  But this one uses mostly email instead of memos.

K-9 Officer Bradley is assigned to an elementary school as a resource officer, largely because his charge,k Boomer, flunked his test as a drug-sniffing dog.  Now Bradley is using the pooch to try to make connections with the kids.  And Boomer starts getting disturbing letters from a third-grader.  Is she just having every-day kid problems or is something much more serious going on?

This story is something different and I enjoyed it a lot.

 

Junk Feed, by Mark Stevens

 

"Junk Feed," by Mark Stevens, in Denver Noir, edited by Cynthia Swanson, Akashic Press, 2022.

The publisher sent me a free copy of this book.

A private eye story with a twist.  Wayne Furlong became a P.I. because he got laid off from his previous work as a newspaper restaurant critic.  Since he wrote under a pseudonym no one knows that he was the guy who wrote those vicious critiques - including his current client,  a hotel manager whose restaurant still hasn't recovered.

But the problem she hires him to deal with took place many floors above the dubious charms of the food shop.  A marketing guru had been decapitated in a hotel room a year ago and the crime had not been solved.  The manager hoped that if the killer is caught the bad attention, in the form of reporters and podcasters, would blessedly retreat.

Furlong approaches the problem with the exquisite eye for detail of an experienced food critic, and that is what makes the story unique.

Detective Anne Boleyn, by Susan Breen

"Detective Anne Boleyn," by Susan Breen, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,  May/June 2022.

This is Breen's second appearance in this space.

So, what's Anne Boleyn been up to lately?

Same old, same old.  Wandering around the Tower of London, but in spite of the famous music hall song, she has her head firmly on her shoulders, not underneath her arm.

An American tourist named Kit discovers this when she drops dead in the Tower and Queen Anne arrives for a chat.  I am describing this as if the story is a comedy but it isn't. Boleyn comes across as a tragic figure, and very sharp except for her blind love for that nasty husband of hers.

How sharp?  She is the one who figures out that Kit was poisoned.  (She is shocked that Kit has no poison tester.)

The two wronged women managed to help each other out in this very clever story.

Murder, She Chiselled, by Marilyn Todd

 "Murder, She Chiselled," by Marilyn Todd, in Death of a Bad Neighbour: Revenge is Criminal, edited by Jack Calverley, Logic of Dreams, 2022.

 I have a story in this book.

 This is the second appearance here by Marilyn Todd. And this is a very silly story.  Not that that is a bad thing.

"Was I the luckiest girl in the Jurassic, or what!"

So says Dinah Sewer, cave woman, who is married to the famous singer-songwriter-hunter Spruce Stonesteen.  When Spruce is leaving for work he asks his wife whether she wants bison or antelope for dinner.

"'Bison," I said.  I'm not into fast food."

The puns only get worse, if you don't like puns.  And eventually a rival singer named Jagga gets killed...

I enjoyed it.

The Last of Their Line, by Robin Hazard Ray

 "The Last of Their Line," by Robin Hazard Ray, in Mystery Magazine, April, 2022.

A nice historical story.  

It's Boston, 1857.  Sumner Bascomb is the superintendent of Mount Auburn Cemetery and he receives a letter from Thomas Damon, wishing to purchase a lot big enough to accommodate 24 bodies.  He has decided to move all the remains of his family from the Trinity Church Burying Ground.

If that doesn't sound complicated enough, it turns out that Damon is not actually in charge of his family's estate.  That privilege belongs to his sister, who lives in the same house as him, but they haven't spoke in twenty years.

A lot of family secrets here, with interesting motives...

Amnesty Box, by Tim McLoughlin

 

"Amnesty Box," by Tim McLoughlin, in Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, Akashic Press, 2022.

This is a collection of stories and essays.  If I am reading the acknowledgements correctly, this story is one of three new ones.

It is sometimes poor form for a reviewer to reveal that a story has an unreliable narrator.  But since McLoughlin's character  begins by saying "Appearance is everything and I'm a fraud" I don't think I'm giving away any secrets.

The protagonist is a postal service police officer in New York City.  One reason he describes himself as a fraud is that he can accurately say he has been shot twice, in combat and on the job, but this ignores the fact that they were both minor injuries caused by friendly fire.  Not as heroic as it sounds.

But the main thread of the story is a stunt he creates to speed up the occasional metal detector check which they run on post office customers, always on Friday because that is the lightest work day.  You see, nobody want to spend the beginning of their weekend processing a bust.

Arrests go down on weekends, they go down in nice weather, they go down when they are inconvenient. Conversely, they spike shortly after Halloween and remain high through Thanksgiving, when overtime checks will arrive in time for Christmas shopping.

The cop invents the Amnesty Box, explaining that customers can drop into this cardboard box anything they know they shouldn't be taking through the metal detector.  The catch is they won't get the dumped items back.  "Even on a slow day we would collect a couple small bags of weed and a few knives."

A harmless-enough trick until something much more dangerous is dumped in the box.  Then the story takes several surprising turns...

The Book of Eve (The First Mystery), by Steve Hockensmith

 "The Book of Eve (The First Mystery)," by Steve Hockensmith, Death of a Bad Neighbour: Revenge is Criminal, edited by Jack Calverley, Logic of Dreams, 2022.

I have a story in this book.

This is the sixth appearance in this column by my friend and fellow SleuthSayer Steve Hockensmith.

As the title suggests, this is a retelling of the first murder mystery.  Abel has gone missing and his mother Eve is looking for him.  

Much of the pleasure in this story is in the way it's told, the language of the characters.  And not all of them are human.  For example, here is a sheep complaining of the absence of Abel, the shepherd.

"It's a bummer, too.  We've had lions come by, hyenas, wild dogs.  There's an eagle that's gotten, like six lambs.  It's a wonder the jerk can still fly."

The ewe bent her head and tore out another mouthful of grass.

"I can hardly believe I'm still alive," she muttered.

"Why didn't you come down out of the hills?" Eve asked her.  "Get me and Adam? Or Cain?"

The eye lifted her head again.  But it wasn't to look at Eve and the serpent.  It was to glance around at the other sheep languidly gazing nearby.

"What?" she said.  "And leave the flock?"

A very funny story that manages to be surprisingly moving as well.

Crime Scene, by Joseph S. Walker.

"Crime Scene," by Joseph S. Walker, in Malice in Dallas: Metroplex Mysteries Volume 1, edited by Barb Goffman, Sisters in Crime North Dallas, 2022.

This is the fifth appearance in this column by Walker.

Adler had done a lot of jobs in fields of work where nobody writes a résumé.  

In recent times, in fact, he's been working as a hitman.  His latest assignment is a very strange one: Kill a millionaire businessman in Dealey Plaza on November 22.  

The contract is so bizarre that Adler's curiosity is piqued.  Why is someone willing to  pay a large amount to see Alex Lersch killed, and why at this time and place?  

His research doesn't help much.  Lersch's fortune is going to big institutions, not likely to rush the inheritance illegally.  No one seems to hate or fear the man.  His only unusual characteristic is that he is obsessed with  a certain assassination...

A clever and thoughtful story.

The Peculiar Affliction of Allison White, by Jesse Bethea

 

"The Peculiar Affliction of Allison White," by Jesse Bethea, in Chilling Crime Short Stories, Flame Tree Publishing, 2022.

Most of the stories in this book are reprints, including one by me.  Bethea's tale is one of nine originals, if I counted correctly.

This is a story about science versus superstition.  We are in rural New England in the late nineteenth century. The narrator is a physician.

His problem is that a young girl - his own niece - is claiming to be ill and furthermore saying that she is being attacked by vampires.  The irrational villagers believe her bizarre story and are digging up the graves of the supposed monsters, searching for signs that the dead have been escaping from their graves.  "T]here are no signs of things that don't exist," the doctor grumbles.

If he can't find a way of conquering this madness corpses are not the only victims who will be harmed.  This is a very clever story.

Morbid Phenomena of the Most Varied Kind, by Mat Coward

 

"Morbid Phenomena of the Most Varied Kind," by Mat Coward, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2022.

This is the seventh appearance in this column by Mat Coward.  He writes extremely silly stories and he does it very well.  Consider this opening paragraph:

If you were thinking of assassinating a politician, my main advice would be don't bother -- they keep spares.  You could spend a whole week popping off the corrupt, the cruel, the ruthless, and the irritating, and they'd just keep replacing them faster than you could reload.

Josh has just fired three shots at a businessman-cum-politician.  He missed, but that was the idea.  He and his roommate are totally against violence.  They simply want to make the big man look imperiled because they want to make money by selling his stock short. 

Amazingly enough, the plan works.  Now all they need to do is keep from getting caught.  The potentially fatal piece of evidence is the rifle Josh fired at the bigwig.  See, it could be traced to Oscar.  They found a clever way to dispose of it but because of crooked businesses and surprisingly efficient government bureaucrats - you can't trust anyone these days -  the rifle has disappeared into a landfill.  Our heroes feel they need to rescue it before a bad guy - or worse, an investigating lawman - finds it.

Then we could take it back home and think of another way of getting rid of it.  Being back at square one with no idea what to do next would be  a huge relief.

Hilarious.

Death Floor, by Martin Limón,

 

"Death Floor," by Martin Limón, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2022.

This is the sixth appearance in this space by Martin LimKimchi Kitty, by Martin Limonn and I believe it is the fourth showing for George Sueño and Ernie Bascom, investigators for the CID of the American Eighth Army.  They work in South Korea, eternally in the mid-seventies.  (They have starred in a dozen novels.)

In this story senior clerk Riley, their old frenemy, has been put in a hospital by a beating.  The colonel in charge of CID had sent him on an off-the-books operation, and it had gone badly.  

It seems an officer had a gambling problem and the bad guys he owed money too swiped the half-American little boy he wanted to adopt, as collateral.  Hence the colonel's desire to keep the case hush-hush.

So Sueño and  Bascom have to find and rescue the little boy and punish the people who beat up Riley, and do it all if possible without making a stink.   Good luck, soldiers.

I wrote two weeks ago that Rafe McGregor convinced me he knew all about nineteenth century British army life.  In the same way Limón is absolutely sure-footed in describing Korea in the 1970s and the tricky lives of the CID agents.  Always a fascinating journey with them.

Red Flag, by Gregory Fallis

"Red Flag," by Gregory Fallis, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2022. 

This is the second appearance in this column by Gregory Fallis.

There are many ways to tell a story.  First things first is not always the best approach.  Fallis starts in the middle of the action and then fills in the backstory; a very common method these days.

But it leaves the critic in an awkward position, doesn't it?  I have to explain some of the backstory so you know what's going on.

Porter moved from Michigan to Los Angeles and had a relatively successful acting career, which was interrupted when he was injured during a mass shooting.

Back in Lansing he leads a quiet life until one day his financial advisor asks him to talk to a client's son. Seems the son has expressed an interest in committing mass murder.  Maybe Porter can talk him out of it? 

Porter talks to the young man, a terrifying and depressing encounter.  Then he talks to the cops who explain that there is basically nothing they can do until the man buys a gun and starts shooting.

Which leaves Porter holding the bag.

A fascinating story.  The ending is not a surprise, but it is a satisfactory one.

 

The Case of the Colonel's Suicide, by Rafe McGregor

 

"The Case of the Colonel's Suicide," by Rafe McGregor, in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Issue 29, 2022.

A pastiche is a story written in the style and characters of another author, attempting to add to the existing corpus of those works.  Fan fiction, if you like.

A homage, on the other hand, uses  elements of the original author's universe in a new way. 

You could call this story a homage since it name-checks two characters by a well-known author. But that would be a stretch, because the tale would work just as well if those two names were replaced by Smith and Jones.

We are in Victorian England and the narrator is Chief Inspector Langham of the Metropolitan Police.  A retired colonel has committed suicide and Langham, himself a former military man, is asked to examine the scene.

What he sees convinces him that the colonel, although burdened with debts and other serious problems, was murdered.  And so Langham begins to delve deeper into the man's troubled past.

What makes this story stand out for me is its use of detail.  My knowledge of 19th century English military customs is nil, but I am convinced that McGregor knows his stuff, and he makes it fascinating.

Bad News, by Steve Hockensmith

"Bad News," by Steve Hockensmith , in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January.February 2022.

This is the fifth appearance here by my friend and former SleuthSayer Steve Hockensmith.  It is the second showing by the characters who star in his highly original novel series.

For those of you who are new to the tales, these are westerns starring Gustav and Otto Amlingmeyer, better known as Old Red and Big Red.  Big Red narrates the tales with a breezy sense of humor.  His older brother is a sour pessimist who, after discovering the reports on Sherlock Holmes's adventures, has determined to become a detective.  He has the brains but his big liability is that he never learned to read.

In this story the brothers, now running the A.A. Western Detective Agency, arrive in Little, Colorado to help a publisher who has been held up and robbed of a whole edition of the paper - apparently by a lone Ku Klux Klansman.  The obvious suspect is a rival publisher who hails from the south.  

But Old Red is no sucker for obvious solutions.

Half the joy in these tales is Gustav's deductions.  The other is Otto's witty asides.   "I'd say I know my brother like the back of my hand even though it's another kind of backside he more often brings to mind."

The story is a treat. 

 

Everybody's Business, by Ken Teutsch

 "Everybody's Business," by Ken Teutsch, in Mystery Magazine, February 2022.

When Karl gets out of prison he returns to his hometown.  Most of his neighbors want nothing to do with him but the exception are two brothers. Far from being turned off by Karl's record, Tommy and Randall are thrilled to know  a genuine convict.  As you may guess, they are not the brightest knives on the tree.

One night they come to Karl with an exciting deal: a grouchy old lady wants them to kill her neighbor.  Karl can split the money with them if he is willing to help.  And by help they mean doing the, well, killing part.

Karl agrees, but he has a plan of his own.  And what could possibly go wrong?  

Some fun twists in this one.

The Best of 2021

 

Over at SleuthSayers I have just posted my list of the best short mystery stories of 2021.  Congratulations to all the writers, and thanks for many hours of pleasurable reading.

Locked-In, by WIlliam Burton McCormick

"Locked-In," by William Burton McCormick, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2022.

 I find myself in an awkward position for the second time.  Well, actually I have been in awkward positions many times.  But this is only the second time for this one. 

 Occasionally I will exchange critiques with another writer.  That is, I will send them a story and ask for advice on it.  They do the same with me.

So I saw a version of this story back in 2019.  It is possible McCormick adopted some of my suggestions.  (Don't ask me what I suggested; it was three freaking years ago.) You can therefore say I am not objective about it, so take my opinion with however many grains of salt you think appropriate.  But it is the best story I read this week.

Oh, and this is the fifth time McCormick has made it into this column.  Now, down to business.

It's 1943.  An insurance man named Jeff has just rented a house in a new city.  His landlord warns him that the cellar door is tricky and can slam shut.  That's what happens in the first paragraph, locking our hero in behind a steel door.

Oops. 

Well, embarassing but no big problem.  He just has to attract the attention of a passer-by who happens to near his lonely alley:

"Help me, please, miss!" I shout.  "I've locked myself in this basement.  Can you come inside and unfasten the door?"

Her stare is icy cold.  "If you think I'm coming in there alone with you, fellah, you're crazy!"

"But--" 

"No. Not with all the odd things and killings happening in this part of town.  Sorry."

"Odd things and killings..."  You don't have to be an MWA Grand Master to guess what happens next.  When Jeff finally gets the attention of someone willing to enter, it is the man responsible for those other bad events.  And a game of cat and mouse begins.

This is a pure suspense story, and very well done. I am especially fond of the last paragraph, in which McCormick tips his hat to another well-known suspense author.

The Ballad of 223, by Preston Lang

"The Ballad of 223," by Preston Lang, in Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, edited by S.A. Cosby, Rock and a Hard Place Press, 2021. 

This is the second story by Lang to appear in this column.

It may be worth noting that my favorite story in this book is one of the few with a White protagonist.  It is also one of the more -- I won't say optimistic, but less pessimistic.

Which may be considered as evidence that it would be helpful to have more people with varied backgrounds reviewing short stories.  If anyone wants to get into the rewarding (well, only intellectually) business of writing a column like this, let me know.

Okay, on to the business at hand.

Alan makes his living play the lute at renaissance festivals.  While hitchhiking to one on a highway he is stopped by state police officers who are baffled by the instrument, the man, and his costume.  "Dancing around in tights and slippers?"

Things go badly sideways and Alan winds up in prison.  But he has a plan on how to get out. It's a longshot, but any shot might be worth taking...

An intriguing tale.