Freezer Burn by April Kelly

 "Freezer Burn," by April Kelly, in Mystery Magazine, January 2024.

This is the second appearance in my reviews by April Kelly.

Kelly writes funny.  In this case she writes funny about that familiar topic, the incompetent criminal.  Two of them, in fact: Lyle and Pooter Floyd.  These brothers are desperate for money.

Now you may be asking yourself why they didn’t just get jobs, but that would be a dead giveaway you aren’t from around here. Floyds didn’t get jobs; they got married. Once upon a time, their father snagged himself a homely teacher rapidly moving past her sell-by date, walked her down the aisle, and for the next twenty-five years really tested the “for poorer” part of her vows...

Lacking the charm to convince an employable woman to join the family, the brothers have decided to make a living robbing storage units.

"Lyle and Pooter scored enough from their bi-weekly foraging to keep beer in the fridge and porn on the cable," but their ambitions are soon raised to a higher level.

Ah, hubris will come for  us all. A very funny story.

Burying Oliver, by John M. Floyd

"Burying Oliver," by John M. Floyd, in Mickey Finn, Volume 3, edited by Michael Bracken, Down and Out Books, 2022.

 This is the third appearance here by my fellow SleuthSayer.

 When our story begins Bucky Harper is digging what seems to be a grave.  Sheriff Morton arrives and demands to know what he's doing.  Bucky says he is burying his dog Oliver.  The lawman doesn't recall any such dog and thinks Bucky might be doing something quite different, and even suggests a motive.

What follows is more or less the opposite of a twist plot. Instead things happen step by step with the inevitability of Greek tragedy.  And at the center of the tale is calm, phlegmatic, Bucky, just taking it all one shovel-load at a time.

Clever and satisfying.

Brain Damage by Tom Leins

 "Brain Damage," by Tom Leins, in Coming Through in Waves: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of Pink Floyd, edited by T. Fox Dunham, Gutter Books, 2021.

Rey is out of prison but he visits Barrett there because Barrett saved his life once.  Of course Barrett wants a favor: "My wife's sister is missing."  She was thrown down the stairs by her ex-boyfriend resulting in brain damage.  

Rey finds out that the wife used to work at sex parties for a crooked lawyer named Thorgerson and Thorgerson used to take an interest in the little sister.  Maybe too much interest...

A hard-boiled private eye-type story with an unusual protagonist. A lot to recommend it.

Hunters, by John M. Floyd

"Hunters," by John M. Floyd, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May 2014.

So, where do you get your ideas?  That's a question writers hear a lot.

One place is news stories.  Sometimes I will run across some bizarre thing that actually happened and file it away, thinking, hmm, yes, that could turn into fiction. 

My friend and fellow SleuthSayer, John M. Floyd, made something out of one of those news items that I never got around to, and more power to him.

Occasionally you hear about someone going on trial because they tried to hire a hitman, often in a bar, to kill someone.  It seems to me that it is usually a woman trying to bump off her husband, but that might be selective memory.

And this story is about Charlie Hunter, who owns a bar in a bump-in-the-road town in Mississippi and has an envelope full of cash ready to pay the hitman he is hiring to solve his marital problem.  As you can guess, things don't go according to plan.

What makes this story different is that it is not the usual bad-guy-tangled-in-his-own-web tale, but more of a mediocre-guy-with-second-thoughts affair.  No heroes, not a lot of villains, and a lot of gray lines.

Newton's Law, by John M. Floyd

"Newton's Law," by John M. Floyd, at The Big Adios, May 28, 2013.

My friend and fellow blogger John M. Floyd is a master of a certain type of very short story.  Typically there is a puzzle and a single clue the reader should be able to figure out.  Think Encyclopedia Brown for grown-ups.  John gets a lot of these stories into Women's World, a market I have, alas, never managed to breach.

This western crime story reminds me of those, although it isn't a solve-it-yourself kind of story.  In fact, it takes quite a way in before you realize the puzzle that is being solved.  (That's the cleverest part of the tale.)

So what's it about?  A lawman and his assistant are bringing a suspect back to town when they get into big trouble.  And in a situation like that, who do you trust?  That, as Wild Bill Shakespeare said, is the question.

Mr. Crockett and the Bear, by Evan Lewis

"Mr. Crockett and the Bear," by Evan Lewis, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May 2012.

The annual humor issue at AHMM is very good this year (says the guy with the cover story), including tales by my friends John M. Floyd and R.T. Lawton.  But I have to say the story I admired the most was by Evan Lewis.

Mr. Lewis is one of those unique minds.  I could see him developing into the next Jack Ritchie or James Powell.  He won the MWA Robert L. Fish Award for his first story, "Skylar Hobbs and the Rabbit Man," which was about a guy who thought he was the reincarnation of Sherlock Holmes.

This issue features the story of a direct descendent of Davy Crockett, whose gift/burden is having the legendary frontiersman as a conscience.   Sort of a Jiminy Crockett, sorry.

The modern narrator is a lawyer and he is trying to defend a zoo whose prize black bear is accused of attacking a keeper.  Obviously he needs to consult the bear.  Fortunately his great-greaty-great-grandfather Davy knows how to do a little "bear whispering." The solution, when it comes, is decidedly non-supernatural, I am happy to report.

Sparkling language in the story as well.  I love the report that a couple were "close enough to share the same toothpick."  I hope we will more from the Crocketts, and from Skylar Hobbs as well.

Wrecked, by Therese Greenwood

"Wrecked" by Therese Greenwood, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2012.
 

Some stories are about plot.  Some are about suspense, or language.  This one is all about character.

The narrator is Rosie, who runs a small-town auto wrecker.  She's interesting in her own way, with her fatalism about her business and her pride in her nephew the cop who was "the grade-two knock-knock joke champion of St. Paul's school."  And there is her mechanic Gary, who can't stop being snotty to that same cop, no matter how ill-advised his attitude is, or how bad his jokes are.

But the star of the show is Floyd the Buddhist, a senior citizen Vietnam vet, who makes his living delivering Vietnamese food and constantly babbles karma-speak.   Why is he always scrounging used car parts?  "My vehicle strives for rebirth."

When a murdered man is found in the car crushing machinery Rosie will need help from all these characters to catch the bad guy.

Fun story.