Time and Tide by Edd Vick and Manny Frishberg

 

"Time and Tide" by Edd Vick and Manny Frishberg, in Black Cat Weekly, #155. 

After a dozen years of cavorting with dolphins in a bikini at Ocean Planet, I found myself out of work when all the live dolphin shows shut down. Damn PETA.

But our intrepid narrator has a plan to get rich.  She lives on the Treasure Coast of Florida and she is training two dolphins, Scott and Zelda, to hunt for artifacts on the ocean bottom and bring them to her.  Things like gold coins from ancient Spanish shipwrecks.

Clever plan, until a surfer arrives on her favorite beach.  And not just any surfer but a video influencer with an entourage.  Can she get rid of him and his buddies before the King tide comes?

An intriguing story. 

Don't Push Me, by Liza Cody

 "Don't Push Me," by Liza Cody, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, July/August 2024.

 This is the fourth story by Cody to make this page. 

I have said before that dialog is character and so is first person narration.  

I'm unfairly known in my regiment as Basher Belker.  The joke is that I hit first and think later.  I don't care.  Women are outnumbered twenty to one where I work, so it's not a bad nickname to have.  It's certainly better than my other moniker -- Shrimp.

Debby Belker is a squaddy - a British soldier.  She has seen a lot of combat overseas but this story takes place in England and the trouble starts when she sees a man beating a small boy. True enough, she hits first and asks questions after.  Turns out the boy  is a thief, but the man is selling counterfeit goods.  The police have no interest in prosecuting him but Belker takes advantage of a possibility that does not exist in the United  States: She organizes a private prosecution.

Turns out the syndicate the bad guy is working for objects to this.  They have some violent plans for our hero.  But Basher Belker is a long way from a soft target.  A terrific story of an underdog that bites hard.

Home Game, by Craig Faustus Buck

"Home Game," by Craig Faustus Buck, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2024.

This is Buck's fourth appearance in this column. 

Sometimes it can be fun to do a mash-up of familiar story types.  We have all read plenty of stories of spouses angered to the point of wanting to kill each other.  And we have encountered many tales of home invasion.  But this is the fonly story I can recall in which the home invader may have  actually been hired to kill a spouse.

And you can understand how these two have gotten on each other's nerves.  Teddy speaks in sports cliches.  "Take the ball and run with it."

Reni, on the other hand, is deep into mindfulness and self-affirmations.  "Fear of failure does not control me." I don't think I would care to listen to either of them for, say, years.

When Stuckey shows up in the middle of the night claiming that he has been hired for a hit it seems plausible.  What follows is a nice suspense tale as plans are revealed and begin to unravel. 

The Art of Cruel Embroidery, by Steven Sheil

 "The Art of Cruel Embroidery," by Steven Sheil, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July 2024.

A historical mystery spread out over decades, and a  classic love triangle.

It starts in Macon, Georgia, in 1948. Woody Wyle is a tailor specializing in the highly decorated clothes favored by country singers.  One day an up-and-comer named Eddie Prospect enters his shop and covets a jacket he can't afford.  So begins a relationship of ebbs and flows, sun and storm,  as Eddie becomes a star and  Woody becomes tailor to the stars.

Woody knows that his looks and personality are never going to make him a sex symbol like Eddie and that's fine until he falls in love with Sammi-Jo.  Inevitably she falls for Eddie, and inevitably, he's a user of women or, as he puts it "not the marrying kind."

What follows is a well-written tale of vengeance, plotted and carried out over decades.