Poison is the Wind That Blows, by C.W. Blackwell

 "Poison is the Wind That Blows," by C.W. Blackwell, in On Fire and Under Water, edited by Curtis Ippolito, Rock and a Hard Place Press, 2025.

Fighting forest fires is dangerous work.  Our nameless narrator is volunteered to do it because he is in prison for killing a man who was looting his house, and he wants to be a firefighter when he gets out.

But this conflagration is more dangerous than most because Reed, who is in charge of the prisoners, is looting houses.  He wants our hero to join his gang.  If he gets caught, he's due for a longer sentence and no career.  If he refuses, well, "Tragedies happen all the time."

Nicely suspenseful story. 

This Time Oughta Go Different, by Robert Mangeot

 

"This Time Oughta Go Different," by Robert Mangeot, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2025.

 This is the sixth appearance in this space by my fellow SleuthSayer.

Mangeot's stories are mostly about character and language.  For example, glom onto this opening paragraph. 

In need of his five o'clock Tanqueray and tonic, a dire need after an all-day mandatory ethics seminar, Vernon took his chances at the Hotel DeLuxa.  Nashville had gone hotter than hell's boiler room, and the DeLuxa offered the lone walkable glimmer of refinement in this South of Broadway wasteland.  A glimmer only.  The DeLuxa was sterile and grayed over, with not one velour cushion to ease Vernon's trick back moaning from the seminar's unforgiving stackable chair.  He'd been non-chargable all week, sidelined, and without much glimmer there on that turning around, either. 

 From this we know the location, the season, the tone, and mostly we know that our protagonist is an ethically-challenged lawyer  down on his luck.   

But wait! The bartender has a mild pain which Vernon is convinced can be stretched into a profitable workman's comp case.  The only problems are that the hotel seems to be mobbed up, the bartender isn't interested in suing, and, uh, she has disappeared.   

Okay, those issues might worry a lesser man than Vernon.  Or a less desperate one. 

Very funny story. 

What Ned Said, by Gary Phillips

 

"What Ned Said," by Gary Phillips, in Hollywood Kills, edited by Adam Meyer and Alan Orloff, Level Short, 2025.

Thanks to Kevin Tipple for catching some typos. 

This is the third time my friend Gary Phillips has appeared in this blog. 

I have said before that stories I like best tend to have at least one of four characteristics: great characters, twist ending, heightened language, or great premise.  We will go back to that.

I learned a new term from this story: grief tech.  As the British would say it is exactly what it says on the tin, meaning it is the use of advanced  technology to help with the mourning process. 

In this story it refers to Ethereal Essence, a company  which uses videos, text messages, and other mementos to create a virtual reality experience between the mourner and the deceased.  The mourner here is Clayton and the deceased is his old friend Ned.  They have a terrific session together - right up to the end when Ned tells his pal that he had been murdered.

And that, my friends, is what I call a great concept. A very enjoyable story.

 

Murder in F Sharp, by Stephen Ross

"Murder in F Sharp," by Stephen Ross, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2025.

This is the fourth appearance here for my fellow SleuthSayer Stephen Ross. 

There are plenty of cliche plots, or if you prefer tropes, that show up in mystery short stories.  I think I read two or three stories a year about a child - usually a boy - discovering a dead body and deciding to investigate.

That's how we start here but as always the question is what you do with the material. Ross uses it in highly original ways.

My name is Thomas Phipps, and I discovered a dead body today.

Thomas is sixteen and he doesn't have to investigate the murder because he has a strong suspicion about who did it.  And anyway, he has a bigger problem: his father wants him to keep taking classical piano lessons but Thomas wants to learn jazz.  Now that's an important issue.

As I have said before, sometimes I read the first sentence of a story and find myself hoping the author can keep up that quality to the end and be my best-of-the-week.  But this story belongs to the other extreme: I didn't know it was my Best until the next morning when I woke up, still thinking about it.  Fine work.

The Cutting Room Floor, by Eric Beetner

"The Cutting Room Floor," by Eric Beetner, in Hollywood Kills, edited by Adam Meyer and Alan Orloff, Level Short, 2005.

This is the third appearance in my blog by Eric Beetner. There are lots of crime stories about Hollywood but this book has a clever gimmick: each story is written by someone who has done the same work in The Industry as their protagonist. For example, Beetner has been nominated eight times for Emmys for editing.

Scott is editing episodes of a reality show.  Its success has been based on one of the contestants: Violet.

She was blunt, rude, short-tempered. She "didn't come here to make friends." She was "a bad bitch and I know it, honey." She was ratings gold. 

But all bad things come to an end and she was getting kicked off the show. Who would have guessed that she wouldn't take the news well? 

Violet finds Scott in his editing room and demands to know why he is making let look like a bitch.  The obvious answer is not going to make her happy. Did I mention that she has a razor and she's not afraid to use it? And that they are locked in the little room together?

Nice use of suspense and a real Hollywood feel, speaking of reality shows. 

Well-Known Gun, by Sam Wiebe

"Well-Known Gun," by Sam Wiebe, in Better Off Dead, vol. 1, edited by D.M. Barr, Down and Out Books, 2025. 

I have a story in this book. 

This is the third story I have reviewed here by Wiebe and, except for quality,  they couldn't be more different. 

 Of the seventeen persons I am accused of killing, I acknowledge all but three. 

This story is the final confession of Joshua Calhoun, former Confederate soldier, now ruthless gunman.  In the hours before he hangs he takes us through his remarkable life and the killing of fourteen men.

But when he gets to the three people he denies killing, well, that's when things get truly surprisingly.  An eloquently written little tale.  

A reminder: Down and Out Books is going out of business, so if you want a copy of this book, grab it. 

 

Hitchcock Blondes Have More Fun, by Lily Samson

 

"Hitchcock Blondes Have More Fun," by Lily Samson, in Birds, Strangers, and Psychos, edited by Maxim Jakubowski, Titan Books, 2025.

As I have said before one of the fun things about themed anthologies is seeing how different authors play with the theme.  In a few cases in this book, I don't see the connection to Hitchcock.  That's not a problem with this one.  

It was written in the stars, my collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock.  We met when we were both young and unknown, yet to be appreciated by the public.

Quite an opening paragraph.  We soon learn that the narrator, Rebecca (hah) is a bored English housewife.  Her big introduction to the Master of Suspense came in 1926 when she was roped in as a last-minute extra in The Lodger. She becomes convinced that she was his favorite extra, as crucial to his movies as his own cameo appearances.  

What we're talking about here is obsession about a person, and that is a theme of both Hitch's work and his life, so it is highly appropriate for the book.  A very neat story with a lovely bit of foreshadowing (because the Master believed in suspense, not surprise).

Take Me To The Pilot, by dbschlosser

 "Take Me To The Pilot," by dbschlosser, in Better Off Dead, vol. 1, edited by D.M. Barr, Down and Out Books, 2025. 

I have a story in this book.

This is the second tale by my friend dbschlosser to make my list. 

Apex (pronounced ahh-pecks, and no "Mister" in front, please) is a security guy in Kansas City.  When a top legal defense firm wants to hire him he jumps at the chance, but it is a pretty strange assignment.  Chuy Lopez is a top member of a criminal motorcycle gang. He is in prison, awaiting trial, and he wants Apex to find his lost dog.

Well, that seems a bit of overkill.

What complicate the matter is that Piloto the pooch is in the possession of Lopez's ex and she is in the Witness Protection Program.

Apex makes it clear he is not interested in letting the gangsters know where a protected witness is being held but Lopez assures him he doesn't care about her at all, just the doggie.  

This is a good private eye procedural with plenty of interesting twists.

  

Two Sentimental Gentlemen, by Gabriel Valjan

"Two Sentimental Gentlemen," by Gabriel Valjan, in Blood on the Bayou: Case Closed, edited by Don Bruns, Down and Out, 2025. 

I have a story in this book.

This is the third story by Valjan to grace my blog.

My favorite piece of writing advice from E.B. White is this: Be obscure clearly. This tale is a good demonstration of that principle.

It is New Orleans during Prohibition.  Fawcett and Angel have arrived and are looking for trouble.  Just for starters they are two men checking into a room with one bed, and worse, one of the men is suspiciously dark in color.  (The mayor has a quota, the hotel clerk explains.)  And they deliberately attract the attention of the richest industrialists in the city.

What are they up to?  Well, that's the puzzle, of course, but it isn't what I mean by being obscure clearly. Here we see them entering their hotel room:

The room, dark and carpeted, appeared undisturbed.  There was a large window, curtained, and His and Hers chairs that framed it like brackets.  There was a closet nearest them, a desk next, and the bed with a nightstand to their right.  Another door was ajar, and a dull light illuminated the ceramic tiles in the bathroom, the subway tiles of the wall there, white as Ahab's whale.

See? Nice and clear, with the lovely little metaphor tossed in at the end. But we immediately learn that something unexpected has happened in the room and we won't find out what until much later.  The precision of the description makes it clear that the obscurity that follows is intentional.

A nice historical tale of suspense.

Wax On, Wax Off, by Nina Mansfield

 

"Wax On, Wax Off," by Nina Mansfield, in  Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Michael Bracken, and Carla Coupe, Wildside Press, 2025.

 Hoo-boy.  Not sure what to say about this one.

Mystery story? Check.  Science fiction? Arguably.  Political satire? Undoubtedly.

Our protagonist is "Andrea Kalinski, PTA treasurer, locally known mommy-blogger, and founder of The Ageless Change, a recently launched skin-care line that targeted menopausal women." 

Unfortunately for her the Body Hair Acceptance Movement has moved into power and twenty-eight states have banned "unnatural hair removal for profit."  Mansfield describes the campaign in detail which we need not go into here, although it sounds depressingly realistic.

Andrea is forced to go to an illegal waxing parlor to prepare for her work-and-recreation trip to Brazil, but someone gets killed.  "I hadn't signed up to investigate a murder. I wanted to battle an unjust law and wear a thong at Ipanema Beach."

Funny and thought-provoking.