Sonny's Encore, by Michael Bracken

"Sonny's Encore," by Michael Bracken, in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, #9.

This is the ninth appearance in this column by my friend and fellow SleuthSayer Michael Bracken, which puts him in the lead, if this is a race, which of course it isn't.  This here is art.

The depression was hard on everyone, even big bands traveling through the south.  Sonny Goodman and his troupe of musicians have found a way to supplement their income with a little larceny.    But when things go wrong they go wrong in a big way.  That could be the end of the story, but Bracken has some surprises in store.

The fun of this story is the details of the well-thought-out capers.

The Whole Story, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

 

"The Whole Story," by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Issue 7, 2020.

This is the second appearance here by this author.

Hayes is a private eye with a strange assignment.  Bobby Putnam is in prison for driving drunk, resulting in the death of his daughter.  He doesn't deny the crime but he wants Hayes to confirm his impression that the driver whose truck he hit was not looking at him.  His eyes, Putnam insists, were on a man across the street,  man who vanished before the cops arrived.

Not that it would have changed Putnam's guilt.   But he is desperate to know if he's right about this one niggling detail about the event that destroyed his life.

Of course there turns out to be more to this clever story.

Sorority House, by Eve Fisher

"Sorority House," by Eve Fisher, in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, #3, 2018.

A nice story by my fellow Sleuthsayer, Eve Fisher, set as many of her stories are, in South Dakota.

The narrator is a woman in her thirties who has moved into an apartment house filled mostly with older people and thinks that's just fine.  Then a wave of new divorcees come in and, alas, they are the "mean girls" from high school.   Lots of requests for favors and "Is your husband out of prison yet?"
  
One of them disappears rather scandalously and then her body is discovered even more so.  The obvious suspect turns out to have an alibi.  Can our hero spot the killer before somebody else gets tagged?

I can't remember the last time an actual whodunit made it onto my best of the week page.  Well done.

A Pie to Die For, by Meg Opperman

"A Pie to Die For," by Meg Opperman, in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Issue 1.

I have been asked recently about my policy so it may be time to repeat this.  Most of the publications I review I either purchase or borrow from libraries.  You can send me a free copy of an anthology, collection, or magazine if you want, as long as it is published this year.  I promise to start reading each story.  If it is the best I read that week I will review it here.

First of all, congratulations to Wildside Press for the first issue of their new baby.  Long may Black Cat Mystery Magazine prowl the mean streets.

This is Opperman's second appearance in my column.

It's Thanksgiving and newlywed Annie is supposed to be preparing a feast for her doting husband and his ungrateful mother.  But then she gets a phone call from Benedict, who she hasn't heard from since before the wedding.

Ah, Benedict, who makes her skin flush and her heart race...  He tells her to be at the Palisades apartments in half an hour and she is eager to oblige.

That means she has to find an excuse to slip out. Which turns out to be tougher than you might expect. And...

And I have to stop there.  But, boy, I never guessed what was coming.  Nice light writing, lovely ending.