And Now, an Inspiring Story of Tragedy Overcome, by Joseph S. Walker

"And Now, an Inspiring Story of Tragedy Overcome," by Joseph S. Walker, in Three Strikes -- You're Dead!, edited by Donna  Andrews, Barb Goffman, and Marcia Talley, Wildside Press, 2024. 

My friend and fellow SleuthSayer seems to be slipping.  Here it is June and he has only had  two stories reviewed in this column.

It is an interesting tale of worlds colliding.  Lonnie Walsh is a second generation mobster.  His sister dies giving birth to the daughter of Brant, a worthless jerk of a husband.  Now Lonnie has to watch over little Kayla while trying to keep idiot Brant out of trouble.

Things get more complicated when Kayla turns out to have the desire and potential to be  a world-class figure skater.   The best thing in this story is Alicia Petkov, the skating coach, who is as hard-bitten as any mobster you are likely to meet.  

"I'm telling you it's very possible that at some point, a group of people in a small room will decide who to send to the Olympics.  When they have that discussion, we want Kayla to be the girl with the saintly dead mother. Not the girl with a gangster in the family."

It strikes me that a lot of Walker's best stories are about complicated families. This is a fine example. 

A Right Jolly Old Elf, by Joseph S. Walker

 

"A Right Jolly Old Elf," by Joseph S. Walker, Black Cat Weekly, #120, 2023.

This is the eleventh story by my friend  to grace this column, making Walker the undisputed champion, for the moment.  

I am a sucker for comic caper stories.  I don't remember the last time I laughed out loud so many times at a story as I did at this one, from its sly first sentence to its calamitous end.

Marty is a no-talent who manages to marry into an influential family.  Sounds good, right? Alas, the family happens to be the Irish mob.  They get tired of him being useless and decide he has to become part of a robbery.  He will attend an office party dressed as Santa while his two brothers-in-law, dressed as elves, slip off to rob another office. What could possibly go wrong?

Colm punched Marty hard in the arm. “Stop saying ho ho ho,” he said. “You sound like somebody beat you over the head with the North Pole.”

And then there's the cops.  And the strippers.  Ho ho ho.

 

Making the Bad Guys Nervous, by Joseph S. Walker

 

"Making the Bad Guys Nervous," by Joseph S. Walker, in Black Cat Weekly, #102.

This is Walker's third appearance in my column this year.  It is his  tenth overall, which ties him with Terence Faherty and Mark Thielman at the top of the pantheon, for the moment.

Tim Chadwick is a disgraced ex-cop who sometimes fills the times between drinks by doing some unlicensed private eye work. (cough cough Scudder? cough cough).

A client is worried that his mother's suburban neighborhood is being plagued with porch pirates - people stealing packages left by delivery workers.  He wants the bad guys caught before they escalate to violence and he is willing to pay Tim to put a week into it.

So Tim finds himself sitting in the living room of Sandy, the client's mother, peering out the window, eating her sandwiches, and listening to her attempt to play the piano.

"Is that Springsteen?"

"If you're feeling generous."

It's a low-key story that shifts to a low-key sort of violence.  Very clever.

Wrong Road to Nashville, by Joseph S. Walker

"Wrong Road to Nashville," by Joseph S. Walker, in Weren't Another Other Way to Be: Outlaw Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Waylon Jennings, edited by Alex Cizak, Gutter Books, 2023.

Walker hasn't appeared on this page since, um, last month. This is his ninth story to make my best-of-the-week list.  Very different from the last.

Our hero is Caleb, a school custodian, built like a pro wrestler.  His goal is to be a Nashville singer-songwriter and it looks like he may have the talent for it.

But first he has a little problem to solve.  His new girlfriend has been kidnapped by bad guys who want him to drive a load of contraband to... Nashville.  This wasn't the way he planned to get there, but you do what you have to do.

 A nice story of steadily building suspense.

 

 

We Are The Stonewall Girls, by Joseph S. Walker

 "We Are The Stonewall Girls," by Joseph S. Walker, in More Groovy Gumshoes: Private Eyes in the Psychedelic Sixties,, edited by Michael Bracken, Down and Out Books, 2023.

This is the eighth appearance in this space by Joseph S. Walker, which puts him near the top of the heap.

Narrator Neil Fell is a gay private eye in New York City in June 1969.  That plus the title should tell you what the story is going to be about.

A wealthy man named Grierson comes to Fell with a problem.  He is not gay but he has made friends with some of the young men in Christopher Park, the ones who call themselves queens.  Now one of them, Alice, has disappeared and Grierson is worried about him. He has approached police and other private eyes but they assume he is interested for sexual reasons and are anything but helpful.

Fell takes on the case and, as you can imagine, winds up involved in the Stonewall Riots.  I thought I knew that subject fairly well but I learned a lot of details.  

The case is interesting as well, and the solution is satisfactory.    

More Than Suspicion, by Joseph S. Walker

"More Than Suspicion," by Joseph S. Walker, in A Hint of Hitchcock, edited by Cameron Trost, Black Beacon Books, 2022.

First of all: great cover.

This is the  sixth story I have reviewed by Walker, and the second this year. 

The place is a small town in Colorado.  The time is just after Pearl Harbor.

Hannah is the projectionist in the town's movie theatre.  She is also the de facto manager since her boss ran off and enlisted.

Supply chain issues leave her running Hitchcock's classic movie Suspicion over and over.  You would not expect it to maintain much of an audience, but one newcomer returns to view it almost every night.  

Darlene's obsession is based on her dislike of the film's ending, in which the husband turns out to be innocent and the wife merely imaging the danger she is in.  "The end is the only part that's a lie.  A pretty lie, but still.  He kills her.  Of course he kills her."

Clearly Darlene has a secret.  It turns out Hannah has one as well - beautifully foreshadowed - and it is one she would love to reveal to Darlene, if she could gather the nerve.  

You won't be surprised that Darlene's past comes calling and the two women have to work together if they want to survive into the future.  A terrific story.

Crime Scene, by Joseph S. Walker.

"Crime Scene," by Joseph S. Walker, in Malice in Dallas: Metroplex Mysteries Volume 1, edited by Barb Goffman, Sisters in Crime North Dallas, 2022.

This is the fifth appearance in this column by Walker.

Adler had done a lot of jobs in fields of work where nobody writes a résumé.  

In recent times, in fact, he's been working as a hitman.  His latest assignment is a very strange one: Kill a millionaire businessman in Dealey Plaza on November 22.  

The contract is so bizarre that Adler's curiosity is piqued.  Why is someone willing to  pay a large amount to see Alex Lersch killed, and why at this time and place?  

His research doesn't help much.  Lersch's fortune is going to big institutions, not likely to rush the inheritance illegally.  No one seems to hate or fear the man.  His only unusual characteristic is that he is obsessed with  a certain assassination...

A clever and thoughtful story.

One Tossed Match, by Joseph S. Walker

 "One Tossed Match," by Joseph S. Walker, in Cemetery Plots of Northern California, Capitol Crimes, 2021.

This is the fourth appearance in this space by Walker, his third with a 2021 publication.  That's unusual.

Also unusual is that this anthology appears to have come into existence without an editor.  Amazing when that happens.

Abe, the narrator, is an ex-con, now working as a bartender.  One day Russ Leopold shows up.

Forty years ago, in 1976, Russ and Gabe Booth and  I were in a crew, and I don't mean we rowed for Stanford. 

The crew committed armed robberies.  Gabe was the planner.  It went well until it didn't. After a botched diamond robbery Russ and Abe got lighter sentences by testifying against Gabe.

Now Russ has learned that Gabe is dead.  No one ever found the millions of dollars worth of diamonds that they stole.  Would Abe like to go to Gabe's little home in the country for a look-see?

This is a story that would fit comfortably in Ellery Queen's Black Mask department.  Don't go hunting for happy endings.

A Day at the Races, by Joseph S. Walker

 

"A Day at the Races," by Joseph S. Walker, in Monkey Business:Crime Fiction Inspired by the Films of the Marx Brothers, edited by Josh Pachter, Untreed Reads, 2021.

I have a story in this book.

This is the third appearance here by Joseph S. Walker, the second this year.

One of the interesting things about an anthology like this one is seeing the many different ways authors interpret the theme.  Some use the plot of the film as a jumping-off place.  Others work with the on-screen personas of the brothers.  This is the first one I have read that tries to show us our heroes as they might have appeared in real life.

Julia Simmons is the head of personnel and payroll at Santa Anita Racetrack and this is the day before the film crew will arrive to shoot the racing scenes for the new Marx Brothers movie.  Unfortunately it is also the day that the manager of the track is murdered.  The handsome detective in charge of investigating the case has many questions which keeps Julia rushing back to her office - where an odd little man in a gray suit is hanging around for no apparent reason.  We will figure out his part in the story long before she does, but it's fun hearing his commentary on the action.

There's a lot of wit in this tale, and a satisfactory plot.

Crown Jewel, by Joseph S. Walker

 "Crown Jewel," by Joseph S. Walker, in Moonlight and Misadventure, edited by Judy Penz Sheluk, Superior Shores Press, 2021. 

The publisher sent me a copy of this book.

This cheerful romp is the second appearance here by Walker.

Like all genres the mystery field is full of repeating tropes.  Locked rooms.  Dying messages.  Private eyes with drinking problems.

And identical twins. Lots of interesting ways to play with identical twins.  Whodunit when both who's look alike?

The late great Jack Ritchie loved mocking such memes and in one story his cop hero was broken-hearted when he realized that the identical twins had nothing to do with the solution to the crime.  So sad.

Which brings us to today's adventure, which is a tale of obsession.  Obsession tends to be funny or tragic depending on how close you are standing to the shrapnel.  this one is pretty funny.

Keenan Beech is a compulsive collector of vinyl, and his golden fleece is The Beatles, better known as the White Album.  You see, the first few million copies have a number stamped on the cover and collectors like Keenan keep buying, buying, buying them, trying to get closer to the elusive lower numbers.  Yeah, obsessive. 

But that's not his big problem.  That would be his identical twin Xavier.  Keenan is a hard working guy; Xavier is an unsuccessful scoundrel.  And when a record store offers Keenan a rare copy of the White Album for a mere five grand Xavier somehow gets his hands on it first by, duh, pretending to be Keenan.

Can our hero somehow steal the album back?  And if he does, will that just be the beginning of his troubles?  A cautionary tale for all the obsessive collectors out there.

Golden Lives, by Joseph S. Walker

 

"Golden Lives," by Joseph S. Walker, in Mystery Weekly Magazine, September, 2020.

Annalee Lincoln left the army due to an accident that removed her foot.  Three months later she is home because her brother Ike died, in another accident.  This one happened while he was attempting to commit a rather stupid felony.

Annalee has trouble grasping that, because Ike was the smart one.  They were raised by their worthless uncle and Annalee feels the guilt common of older siblings who escape from a toxic home and have to leave the younger ones to cope without them.  

She can't bring him back but can she figure out what happened?  And maybe find love along the way?

Very satisfactory story.

Doing Time in the Crunchy Granola Suite, by Tim P. Walker

"Doing Time in the Crunchy Granola Suite," by Tim P. Walker, in Rock and a Hard Place Magazine, #1, 2019.

The publisher sent me a free e-copy of this magazine.

It's a cliche of old gangster movies.  One of the bad guys gets wounded so they show up at a doctor's home, point a gun at the dedicated physician and say: "Fix him up, Doc.  If he dies, you die."

This is a modernized version.  Our doctor had his license suspended for giving out too many prescriptions for goodies.  He is waiting out his sentence by working at a "holistic treatment center with the operating hours of a 7-11."  That is, a joint designed to take in those wounded baddies, for a price.

All well and good except that the desperado at his door tonight wants him to fix a buddy whose booboo is a bullet hole right through the forehead.  And, in classic gangster tradition, he is not taking no for an answer.

"Help him, man," he says.  "I ain't asking you no more."

Lots of suspense and sparkling writing.