A Hell of a Thing, by Wayne J. Gardiner

 "A Hell of a Thing," by Wayne J. Gardiner, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2021.

This is the second appearance here by Wayne J. Gardiner.  It doesn't have a complicated plot, more of a slice-of-life story.  

On the first page Carly does something most officers never need to do in their whole careers: fire her weapon in action.  In fact, she shoots three armed robbers and she shoots them all dead.

The rest of the story is about her trying to find ways to cope with her reactions and those of the people around her.  And, perhaps inevitably, there is a niggling self-doubt: Is she sure the first robber was turning his gun toward her?

It is a moving tale, well-told.

Glass, by James R. Benn

 "Glass," by James R. Benn, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2021.

One of the many reasons AHMM is my favorite magazine is that they occasionally take a chance on a crime-related story from a different genre.  This story, for example, has a clear science fiction orientation.

The proton moved an at insane speed.  If it had been capable of fear, it would have been terrified.  Contained within an oval tube, traveling just short of the speed of light, it whipped around the 54.1-mile circuit ceaselessly as other protons shout past it from the opposite direction.  Collisions sparked all around it, sending smashed protons against the smooth metalic surface which contained its universe.

 That's the start.  We follow the path of this proton for an entire page before things go awry. The superconducting super-collider goes boom and a piece of 21st-century technology is blasted back through time to 1965 where it is discovered by hapless recently-fired salesman Guy Tupper.  Guy brings it to his cousin Jerry who runs a repair shop.  Together they figure out just enough to get the device working, and then...

Well.  That would be telling.

There is a clever roman a clef here, with a well-known writer being referenced under a transparent pseudonym.  The best part is that the plots of his novels fit spookily to the situation Guy and Jerry find themselves in.

There is a twist in this tale that made me gasp audibly.  That doesn't happen very often.

 

The Candidate, by Tom Ziegler

 

"The Candidate," by Tom Ziegler, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July, August 2021.

It is unusual for me to select three stories from the same publication in a row.  It's not like I'm not reading others at the same time...

Frank is a bagman, collecting money all over the midwest for a crime organization in Chicago.  The old mob is changing with the times and wants Frank to take on a more varied role and he isn't sure if he wants to. But how easy is it to quit the mob?

Things come to a head when a famous (or infamous) character dies of natural but embarrassing causes in a brothel with mob collections.   Somehow erasing the connection turns out to be Frank's job.

What follows is a methodical operation with a few surprising twists. 

The Sweet Life, by Eve Fisher

 

"The Sweet Life," by Eve Fisher, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2021.

This is the third appearance here by my fellow SleuthSayer Eve Fisher.

As I have said before, some stories sneak up on you.  I'm not talking about surprise endings.  I'm talking about a story that you finish and think, "Well, that was okay," but then the next day you realize you're still thinking about it.  Maybe you reread it to catch more of the details.  As Paul Hanson said "I may be done with the book, but it’s not done with me.” 

This is one of those stories, for me anyway.

Carrie is a teenager who has had a rotten life.  She considers her time with Ethan to have been pretty good because, while he made her sell drugs, he didn't force her into prostitution.  That's a highlight.

When that arrangement collapses she lucks into a gig with an agency that cleans houses.  (She has to lie about her age, and other things.)  Turns out that's work she is happy with, even though some of the customers are a little weird.

But then Molly comes back into her life, and Molly is bad news.  Just the kind of person to steal something from a house they are cleaning and ruin it for everyone.  

What happens is more complicated than that, and more interesting.  Not a twist ending, but I definitely did not predict how the story turned out.

The Waiting Game, by Dana Haynes

 

"The Waiting Game," by Dana Haynes, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2021.

 This is the second time Haynes has appeared in these electrons.  It is my first encounter with his series characters, Fiero and Finnigan, who run  St. Nicholas  Salvage & Wrecking, which is actually a bounty hunter firm that chases international bad guys.  But that's not the problem they are dealing with here.

Finnigan has been kidnapped by very nasty Russians who want Fiero to revert to her old occupation of assassin.  Only she can get close to a certain target for them.  They show her a video of her business partner being beaten and promise to produce another film of him being clobbered every day until the job is done. Finnigan, we learn is locked in a cinder block bunker with an iron door; escape is impossible.

The Russians have a great plan. But as von Moltke said 150 years ago, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and Fiero and Finnigan have no intention of following the bad guys' rule book.  I won't give anything away but will say they kept delighting and surprising me.  I was reminded of that classic TV show The Avengers.

One thing amused me: Finnigan is unimpressed by the beating or the lockdown but something upsets him.  He asks his captors to bring him a crossword puzzle book.  "But not Sudoku!  I hate that shit!" I wonder if Haynes knows where Dell Magazines (which published AHMM) makes a lot of their money?

 

The Case of the Brain Tuber, by Mark Thielman

 

"The Case of the Brain Tuber," by Mark Thielman, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2021.

This is the sixth appearance here by my fellow SleuthSayer Mark Thielman, and the second by his unlikely hero.

Sheer silliness here.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The narrator is a private eye whose side gig is dressing up as a potato for marketing events at supermarkets.  They call him the Spud Stud.

But this time he gets to appear as a normal person for a special event at the Idaho Potato Museum. They are celebrating the newest inductees to the Potato Hall of Fame.  So get ready for tater-based humor.

The band is called the Twice-Baked.  The name tags were "shaped like small packages of freeze-dried hash browns." They are serving vodka (of course) but you can also get a sparkling wine called Potateau.

Like I said: silly.  But when one of the guests of honor dies and the cops are delayed the Spud Stud has to solve the crime. His method is clever.      

The Witches of Endor, by Janice Law

 

"The Witches of Endor," by Janice Law, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2021.

Janice Law is one of my favorite contemporary short storyists, as demonstrated by the fact that this is her seventh appearance here.  She is also my friend and a fellow SleuthSayer.

Edie and Cynthia are older women, two sisters with an unusual occupation.  They create highly detailed dioramas of crime scenes.  Usually they are commissioned by forensic conferences to show actual murders or create training puzzles.

But their current assignment is different.  A private client has asked them to reconstruct the scene of an unsolved murder.  What's his motive?

"It was an article of faith with [Cynthia] that a really complete reconstruction held the solution..."

The ending cleverly ties the title in.  I wonder how many readers will understand that part?

A Family Matter, by Barb Goffman,

"A Family Matter," by Barb Goffman, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2021. 

I corrected a bad typo in my original entry.  My apologies.

This is the third appearance here by my fellow SleuthSayer Barb Goffman.

I have said before that I like stories in which a character has a chance at redemption, whether they wind up taking it or not.  Here is an example.

It's 1962 and Doris lives in a very nice suburb called The Glen.  Most of her friends are married to men who work for the big pharmaceutical company in town.  The place has standards.  

And the new neighbors, Ginny and Bill do not meet them.  They raise chickens.  They hang up their laundry in the yard.  Doris is determined that these offensive violations of the norms will not stand.

But when she realizes another very different norm is being broken she has to determine what really matters in her neighborhood.  And that may offer a bit of redemption.

A classy story.

The Underneath, by Stephen Ross

 "The Underneath," by Stephen Ross, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2021.

 This is the second appearance by my fellow Sleuthsayer, Stephen Ross.  It's a quicky, but clever. 

William is a seventy-two-year-old retired zookeeper, a bachelor (or widower, depending on which page you believe...oops).    One of his few pleasures in life is riding the bus to town on Friday mornings with his neighbor, the charming young Julie. 

But one Thursday night William hears her arguing with her husband, Doug.  The next day: no Julie on the bus.  Hmm...

The suspicious neighbor is a set-up we have read many times but, as usual, what matters is what you do with the set-up.  I won't give anything away but in just a few pages William conducts his investigation and makes a very clever plan.

Woodstock, by Michael Bracken

 "Woodstock," by Michael Bracken, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2020.

This is the seventh appearance in this space by my fellow SleuthSayer Michael Bracken.  That puts him close to the top of the list of repeat offenders.  This time he is a long distance from his usual territory, both geographically and thematically.

It's August 1969 and Shirley Warner picks up a hitchhiker who explains he is on his way to a music festival near Woodstock, New York.  The hitcher, a hippie, decides she looks like a Shirley.  "A housewife.  Her old man takes the train into the city five days a week, expects dinner on the table and a fresh martini waiting when he gets home.  Most exciting thing a Shirley does is watch Wild Kingdom Sunday nights to see if Him Fowler gets mauled by something." 

Shirley's response?  She throws her wedding rings out the window.

And that is how the story proceeds.  Shirley's reaction to the famous Three Days of Peace and Music, tells us all we know (or need to know) about her immediate past.  By the time it is over her life is moving in a new direction.

A well-written story.

A Beastly Trial, by Mark Thielman

"A Beastly Trial," by Mark Thielman, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2020.

Oh, what a lovely cover.  This is the fifth appearance in this space by Mark Thielman.  Of his previous successes I count two historical mysteries and two comedies.  This time he combines the two.

The tale is set in sixteenth-century France.  Bernard de Vallenchin is an advocat, essentially a defense attorney, and he has his work cut out for him.  His client, together with her six offspring, committed the unprovoked murder of a small child and the community is demanding vengeance.  But what makes the case particularly challenging--

No.  I can't tell you that.  Major spoiler.

I had no idea where this story was going but I read some hilarious passages to a friend who seldom reads mysteries and she figured it out immediately.  That tells you something about me or about her, I suppose. 

This story is based on an actual trial that took place in France hundreds of years ago.  Thielman makes it clear that it is firmly rooted in a view of the universe that seems more foreign to us than the medieval French language.  But that is part of what makes it a fun story.

Night Train to Berlin, by WIlliam Burton McCormick

"Night Train to Berlin," by William Burton McCormick.  Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2020. 


This is McCormick' fourth appearance here, and it's quite a change.  The others were humorous stories but this one is sheer suspense.

It is 1939 and Stalin and Hitler are playing footsie.  As part of their nice-making the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany are exchanging prisoners.

Our narrator is a German-born Communist named Moller.  He has lived in the USSR since its origin but is now  being shipped back to his homeland in exchange for some unfortunate Russian the NKVD wants to get their hands on.  He knows that the vehicle he is about to board "might as well be my funeral train."  The Gestapo will soon torture him death.

But there are plots within plots on board that choo-choo, and an unlikely ally might be able to help him out.

I read this in one sitting, because I had to know it ended...

Bride of Torches, by Kenneth Wishnia

"Bride of Torches," by Kenneth Wishnia, in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery magazine, March/April 2020.

Haven't the AHMM covers been great the last couple of years?  And the recent redesign is fine as well.  My compliments to the design staff.


My friend Ken Wishnia has told a lovely story here.  I should say retold because he is working from the story of Yael in the Book of Judges.  He has filled in the brief biblical tale with a lot of context about the Iron Age.  (Does that sound dull?  It isn't.)

The Kanaanites blocked the roads and barred any contraband iron goods from coming up from the coast.  There were no blacksmiths in the land in those days, so there was no sword or spear made of iron to be found in the land of Yisra'el, and the people had to rely on migrant metalworkers to sharpen their pitchforks...

Ya'el is the wife of one such metalworker and she commits the crime (?) which is the centerpiece of our story.  The main thing Wishnia adds to the Bible tale is giving her a motive.  In fact, he offers two, one of which feels very modern without being anachronistic.

I liked this very much indeed.

Mistaken Identity, by Wayne J. Gardiner

"Mistaken Identity," by Wayne J. Gardiner, in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, January/February 2020.

Gary Hoffman is the senior half of a small town police force.  One night he is called out to a bar where a stranger has snatched up the owner's shotgun and told him to call the cops.  In the fracas that follows Hoffman kills the stranger.

I'm not giving anything away, I should point out.  This is, as they say, the premise of the story.  And it's a wittily written tale.  Take this bit of conversation between Hoffman and his receptionist.

Marie gave him a pat.  "Take all the the time you need," she said.  "I can keep up with the little things."
"Can't take too long," Gary said.  "People might realize this whole operation can run without me."
Marie had issued as much sympathy as she could muster.  "Don't worry about it.  It won't come as a surprise to anybody."

But there will be other surprises in store, as Hoffman tries to figure out why a stranger wanted to kill him.  And whether there may be more danger ahead. 

Thanksgiving Eve, by Mark Thielman

"Thanksgiving Eve," by Mark Thielman, in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November/December 2019.

This the fourth appearance in my space by Mark Thielman. It is very silly.  Not that that is a bad thing.

Our hero -- well, narrator, anyway -- is about to celebrate Thanksgiving in the bosom of his family.  That's a bit of luck because he is on probation "for that unfortunate  incident where Mr. Thompson's car accidentally ended up in my possession."  Apparently that sort of thing happens to him a lot.

He decides he needs to buy some weed to make it through "life's vagaries.  They didn't teach me what a vagary was, but I think it's bad."

Which might not be a problem except that his sister Eve unexpectedly shows up for the dinner with her boyfriend Bill.  And Bill is an agent for the Drug Enforcement Agency.  Suddenly that bag of weed is very much on our guy's mind.

Funny stuff.

Miss Starr's Good-bye, by Leslie Budewitz

"Miss Starr's Good-bye," by Leslie Budewitz, in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November/December 2019.

It was just last month that I wrote in this space about mysteries that feature historical figures.  Naturally enough such tales are usually about well known people: Samuel Johnson, Weegee, Eleanor Roosevelt...

Not so today.  This is (at least) the second story by Leslie Budewitz about Stagecoach Mary, a former slave who moved to Cascade Montana in 1885 to take care of a member of the family she had worked for back east who was now the head of a Catholic school. 

This story is not about a nun; far from it.  (Although one character makes an innocent comparison between the women, causing Mary to have a coughing fit.  Miss Starr is a prostitute, apparently the only one in Cascade.  Her brother has arrived, wanting her to return to civilization.

Her reply: "If you want to take me back to Philadelphia, you might as well kill me first.  Because a life in a gilded cage would be the death of me."

Someone does die and Mary needs the help of a young Indian girl to solve the puzzle.  Most of the story is told from Josie's viewpoint which makes it all the more intriguing, since we understand much of what she does not. 

Niall Nelson is on my Flight, by Jim Fusilli

"Niall Nelson is on my Flight," by Jim Fusilli, in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, September/October 2019.

This is the second appearance here by Jim Fusilli.

Betty's point: You don't send money back.  You don't negotiate out of insecurity.  You push hard.  You demand.
My question: Do they really want me?

Paul has written a treatment for a movie based on the life of musician Nick Drake and now he is flying to France to talk to a studio interested in  making the flick.  He is afraid he is not good enough.  His much-younger wife Betty clearly thinks he is not ambitious enough.  (He suspects she only stays married to him to provide a father figure for her son.)  And it turns out a famous A-list actor is on their flight, someone Betty thinks he should find a way to talk to...

That's all I will tell you about the plot.  There are two things that made this story stand out for me.

One is Fusilli's use of real people and institutions.  I think most writers would have had their fictional characters fly on Paris Airlines to talk to executives at Seine Studio, but he just flat out says Air France and Canal+.  And Nick Drake too, was a real-life person.  Niall Nelson, of course, is not real, but you don't have to be an addict of Hollywood gossip shows to guess what sixty-ish Irish action star Fusilli is invoking.

The second element is a very blunt form of foreshadowing.  Early twentieth-century crime writer Mary Roberts Rinehard is credited/blamed with being the queen of the "Had I But Known" school of writing, in which suspense is created by lamenting bad decisions.

Fusilli doesn't do the lamenting but he simply warns us that bad things are about to happen.  It was one of those men, I later learned, who set out to harm us.  That's the first of several notes.

I feel like it shouldn't work but it certainly does.  Good story.

The Surrogate Initiative, by Brian Cox

"The Surrogate Initiative," by Brian Cox, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2019.

One of the many things I like about AHMM is that they are willing to push genre boundaries.  They occasionally publish a western, science fiction, or even fantasy story if it has a strong crime element.

Take this tale as an example.  It tells of the first criminal case decided by a jury of AI surrogates.  Nobody wants to be called to jury duty so computer programs are developed with the personalities of potential jurors.  Unlike their real life counterparts they never get sick, or bored, they automatically understand all the technical jargon of expert witnesses and their biases can be tuned by the judge. 

Could it ever happen?  Probably not.  But it's fascinating to think about it, and Cox's story provides several twists along the way to what might be justice.

Minerva James and the Goddess of Justice, by Mark Bruce

"Minerva James and the Goddess of Justice," by Mark Bruce, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.  July/August 2019.

I have a fondness for the Black Orchid Novella Award, and not just because I won it once.  Co-sponsored by AHMM and the Wolfe Pack, it is intended to honor and promote the novella genre used by one of my favorite authors, Rex Stout. The rules do not require you to copy Stout's format, but most of the winners do.  (Typically that means a mastermind detective, a narrator/legman, and a final gathering of suspects.)

Let's get to Mark Bruce's winning entry.  In 1962 Carson Robinson is a private eye in Sacramento, California.  He was recently in the army, in "a place you never heard of called Vietnam... I was an advisor."  They didn't like his advice, which was "to get out of that godforsaken jungle as fast as we could..."

He is hired by Minerva James, a famous defense lawyer.

Why would a high-class act like Minerva James summon a beaten veteran like me?  I had only just obtained my license after two years of struggle and an initial failure to pass the licensing exam.

There is a murder case but she makes it clear that their job is not to catch a killer but to  find evidence to exculpate her client.

"Mr Robinson, if I asked you to do something dirty and underhanded, would you do it?"
"No," I said.  She looked at me in surprise.
"II thought you needed work," she said.
"I need a soul too."

It's going to be an interesting relationship.  Makes for a good story.

The Three Camillas, by William Burton McCormick

"The Three Camillas," by William Burton McCormick, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine,  July/August 2019.

This is the third appearance here by McCormick and the second for Quintus the Clever.  But our hero, if that's the right word, takes a while to arrive.

The story is set during the rule of Caligula the mad in the Roman empire.  The narrator is Camilla Tertia, which is to say, the third Camilla.  ("Siblings with identical names, especially amongst girls, were common in conservative and affluent families...")

Tertia is twelve and, she reports proudly, "already considered far and wide the scoundrel and gossip of the family."  Reports have not been exaggerated.

Her sister Secunda is about to make an unhappy marriage.  Tertia decides it can be prevented if her expensive engagement ring is lost - a bad omen!  And who better to make it disappear than the luckless thief she meets after he is caught and whipped?

Quintus is clever enough to want nothing to do with her - what's Latin for hellcat? - but she doesn't give him much choice.  The best part of the story is their conversations.

"Be an honest man, Quintus, and rob my sister!"