"Martin, the Novelist," by Marcel Aymé, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July/August 2023.
Can I call this a 2023 story? It seems to have been written (or set) in the 1930s, and the author died in 1967. But I think this is it's first publication in English.
And it is a treat.
Martin is a successful novelist with one great flaw. He kills off his characters. Even his protagonists. Sometimes in the middle of a book. In one novel he killed off everybody.
His publisher can't stand it anymore and extracts a promise that no one important will die in his next book, or no money.
That's hard enough for Martin to bear but even worse is a visit from one of his characters, who is very unhappy with the plot. Everybody's a critic, right?
And then one of his friends comes with a special request: Could Martin put a certain real person in his book, kill her, and thereby bump her off for real?
Talk about meta. Aymé rings more changes on the theme and they are delightful.
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