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...

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.