The Advantages of Floating in the Middle of the Sea, by David Spencer

 "The Advantages of Floating in the Middle of the Sea," by David Spencer, in Every Day A Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Song of Stephen Sondheim, edited by Josh Pachter, Level Best Books, 2025.

Last week John Floyd wrote an excellent piece at SleuthSayers about some plotting tricks.  One was plot reversal: "Everyone talks about twist endings, but this kind of thing is effective anywhere in the storyline."

Indeed it can be, and in this story, it is

Teaser is a master thief and he has scuba dived to a private island to steal an ancient Japanese artifact.  His backup team, Pran and Gadge, are following him on radio.  In a story like this the reader usually contemplates one question: Will the gang triumph or will things fall apart at the last moment?

But in this case, halfway through the story: plot reversal.  And suddenly the action is quite different and so are the stakes.  It makes sense and holds together beautifully.  I would do a disservice if I said more.  But the writing sparkles and the dialog is as good as the plot.

The Former Detective, by Jamil Jan Kochai

 

"The Former Detective," by Jamil Jan Kochai, in Sacramento Noir, edited by John Freeman, Akashic Press, 2025.

The publisher sent me a free copy of this book.

It is an occasional complaint of mine that the editors and authors of this series forget that noir requires a crime, not just depressing events.  Some stories in the current volume suffer from condition, but this is  not one of them.

Zakariya was a cop in Afghanistan but now he and his wife are refugees living in an immigrant community in Southport.  As the story begins he smells blood and traces it to a field where two strangers are burying the corpse of an Afghan teenager.  Given his situation, this is not a crime Zakariya dares to get involved in, certainly not by investigating.

But it turns out that he is only one degree of separation from the family of the victim. And so we follow his conversations with the people who don't know what he knows about the situation.

A gloomy story with an interesting ending.  

Being Alive, by Brian Cox

 "Being Alive," by Brian Cox, in Every Day A Little Death: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Song of Stephen Sondheim, edited by Josh Pachter, Level Best Books, 2025.

 This is the second story I have reviewed here by Cox. 

There are many classic story premises in our field.  Spouse wants to kill spouse (one editor said that is the plot she sees submitted the most often). The cop haunted by one specific case. The thief forced or persuaded to commit One Last Job (more common in action movies than print, I think.)  The private eye trying to help an old friend.

And the retired spy whose past has caught up.  That's the one we face today.

Jones left the Company after an operation went disastrously wrong.  Now he spends his time fishing in a rural community.  But things change when he gets a box of fishing gear from his old supervisor.

Then an old colleague arrives with news about that botched mission and the fact that that former supervisor recently died in an accident.  Jones' past is catching up fast...

A nicely suspenseful story that took me by surprise.

Cast, in Order of Reappearance, by Simon Brett

"Cast, in Order of Reappearance," by Simon Brett, in Playing Dead, edited by Martin Edwards, Severn House, 2025.

 This book is in honor of Simon Brett, a festschrift to get fancy, so it is nice that his own contribution stood out.  This is his second appearance on this blog, by the way. 

Brett's most famous character is Charles Paris, a not very successful actor (the story features a few painful one-line reviews of his work from newspaper critics). And then there is his hobby: "His amateur investigations had been a sequence of wrong trees barked up and wrong suspects accused."

Now he is starting a tour with a dreadful whodunit.  He plays "The Suspect Whose Work As A Doctor Gave Him Access To The Medication An Overdose Of Which Caused The First Murder Victom To Die."  I hope that isn't how he was listed in the program. 

And speaking of murder, there is a lot of bad blood in the acting company and things seem to be getting worse...

But the story remains a treat.