I Heard A Romantic Story, by Lee Child

"I Heard A Romantic Story," by Lee Child, in Love Is Murder, edited by Sandra Brown, Mira, 2012.

When an author makes most of his income writing one kind of novel it must be a great relief to occasionally break loose and write a very different kind of short story.  One example of that is Field of Thirteen, Dick Francis's collection of tales, none of which use the first person narration so familiar from all of his novels.

And Lee Child, when he isn't writing his Reacher novels produces some excellent little stories. And this one is all about style. 

Love is Murder is the third anthology from the International Thriller Writers, and the theme is romantic suspense. Many of the stories are fairly standard romantic suspense - boy and girl either fear each other or fight a common enemy.  But Child is on a very different wavelength. 

Did I mention that this piece is all about style?  For one thing it all written in one long  breathless paragraph.  And here's how it starts:

I heard a romantic story.  It was while I was waiting to kill a guy.  And not just a guy, by the way.  They were calling this guy a prince, and I guess he was...  . 

The narrator is a hit man for our government and the romantic story involves the spy who authorized the killing and the woman whose job it was to get the mark in the right place at the right time.  You see, she happened to be the boss spy's lover.  But that won't interfere with the plan, will it?

Child is far too good a writer to use the unconventional style just for giggles.  It adds to the suspense, and makes the outcome less predictable.  Nice piece of work.

The Double, by Janice Law

"The Double" by Janice Law in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Issue 7

My friend Janice has created a little gem here, I think.

Malik has the fortune, good or bad, of resembling the General, his country's beloved dictator.  Naturally he is assigned the job of impersonating the General, saving him from boring meetings and assassingation attempts.

But the General is a far-thinker and he sends Malik, with proper supervision, to set up a new life for himself in Miami, just in case at some time in the future the General turns out not to be so beloved.  And that works fine until the inevitable happens.

Because only one person can live that new life, right?

The Premature Murder, by Michael Mallory

"The Premature Murder," by Michael Mallory, in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, Issue 7.

I have indicated before I am a sucker for stories that try to rethink some elements of our genre's history.  My old friend Michael Mallory does a fine job in this story.

The time is 1852, the place is Baltimore, and the narrator (anonymous, unless I missed his name somewhere along the line) is a new recruit for a private detective agency, trying to prove he is good for more than filing papers and fetching growlers of beer.

In a bar one night he meets a potential client, a down-on-his-luck actor who wants him to investigate the mysterious death of the actor's estranged son, one Edgar Allan Poe...

The story is full of detail and atmospheric language (our hero doesn't carry a pocket watch, he carries a repeater.  The gun in the story is a Philadelphia Deringer, spelled correctly for once.)  A treat, all in all.

This is my first encounter with Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, and I am enjoying it, but I resent paying for the twenty pages that repeat a Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle.  Don't most of us already have a copy of those books?

Training Day, by Andrei Kivinov

"Training Day," by Andrei Kivinov, in St Petersburg Noir, edited by Julia Goumen and Natalia Smirnova, Akashic Press, 2012.

This new noir volume by Akashic gets started, logically enough, with a story about a policeman's first day on the job.  It rambles a bit but eventually focuses on a mystery of sorts involving the apparently supernatural ability of a corpse to be in two places at once.

It's not a detective story per se, the cops aren't trying  to solve the puzzle.  But in the course of their duties they do.  An interesting glance at what a day in the life of a St. Petersburg cop might look like.

Window of Time, by John H. Dirckx

"Window of Time," by John H. Dirckx, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November 2012.

I wrote once before about Dirckx's series of stories about Cyrus Auburn. I think that one of the things that make these police procedurals memorable is that while Auburn works alone he has a cast of supporting bit characters with recognizable personalities who get to play thier small roles in each episode.  We know that the crime scene man is going to bump horns with the coroner's guy, and so on.

In this case, a nasty gossip columnist has been killed in his own apartment i a high securtiy high rise.  Aubusrn has to figure out who done it, of course.

The other thing that makes these stories stand out is the cleverness of the writing style.  For example, Dirckx could have written "Auburn thought the workmen had probably not been as prompt as they claimed."  Instead he wrote: "Auburn suspected the roundness of these numbers."  Nice.

Good Intentions, by Michael Z. Lewin

"Good Intentions," by Michael Z. Lewin, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,  November 2012.

Last year in this space I reviewed "Who Am I," in which Lewin gave Albert Samson, his Indianapolis private eye an unusual client: a quiet, unremarkable man called LeBron James who was convinced his father was an extraterrestial.

The would-be alien is back, this time calling himself Wolfgang Mozart.  He is still doing good deeds and for his troubles this time he gets stabbed.  Since he is unable to answer questions Samson has to figure out what happened and why. 

Mozart and Samson are sympathetic characters and the story is well-written.  (My favorite line: A nurse named Matty meets Albert's kid the cop.

"And she's YOUR daughter?"  Matty tilted her head.  "Your mother must be very very beautiful."

LIttle Big Commentary: Not For Sale

It seems ridiculous to even say this but maybe, because of stories like this one, every online critic who can say this, should.   So here goes.

My reviews are not for sale.  Nobody pays me for them.  Sometimes someone sends me a free book (or more often a link to an ebook) in the hope that I will review it.  But there's no payment.

Why are my reviews always positive?  Three reasons:
1.  I don't like writing negative reviews.
2.  Panning a short story is silly; wait five minutes and it will be gone anyway.
3.  Because of reasons 1. and 2. I choose to review the best story I read that week.  If I didn't like any, I choose a classic.

All you other reviewers out there, if you don't get paid (and I assume you don't) maybe it's time to say so.

The Final Ballot, by Brendan Dubois

"The Final Ballot," by Brendan DuBois, in Mystery Writers of America presents Vengeance, edited by Lee Child, Mulholland Books, 2012.

Boy, I don't know if it's just the dog days of summer affecting my mood but I can tell you I have just loved  the last three stories I chose for this column.  Real stand-outs.

Beth knew in a flash that she was outgunned.  This man before her had traveled the world, knew how to order wine from a meny, wore the best clothes and had gone to the best schools, and was prominent in a campaign to elect a senator from Georgia as the next president of the Untied States.

She put the tissue back in her purse.   And her?  She was under no illusions.  A dumpy woman from a small town outside Manchester who had barely graduated from high school and was now leasing a small beauty shop in a strip mall.

That's not the opening of the story but it is the core of it.  Ms David, meet Mr. Goliath.

Beth's daughter was brutally attacked by a son of the senator/candidate.  The man-of-the-world described above is the problem solver.  "In other words, I'm the senator's bitch."  He offers her two choices which he insists on calling "avenues."  She can pursue prosecution of the senator's son, guaranteeing herself years of being stripped naked by the press, attacked by his supporters, dragged out as a symbol by his enemies... or she can agree to let the culprit get psychological treatment and accept financial aid from the senator to cover her daughter's long-term medical needs.

I won't spoil it by telling you what happens next.  But two old sayings apply:  Never fight with someone who has nothing to lose.  And: the most dangerous place in the world is between a mother and her children.

A Change of Heart, by Raymond Goree

"A Change of Heart," by Raymond Goree, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, October 2012.

I'm not on the committee that decides on who gets the Robert L. Fish Award for best first mystery of the year, but they're crazy if they don't give this one a careful look.

The narrator is a Las Vegas cop who, at around age 40, suffers a heart attack.  Turns out his ticker is in horrible shape.  ("Like trying to sew Jell-o together," says the surgeon.)  After some more horrible luck ("Jokes on you, says God.") he gets a heart transplant.  By coincidence he had met  the donor, a cancer patient named Sammy, in the hospital.

After the operation he feels obliged to go to Sammy's favorite restaurant once a month and order the man's favorite, very unhealthy, sandwich.

Sometimes Sammy joins him.  Not to eat, of course, just to watch him eat.  Creepy, huh?

But wait, there's more.  One month Sammy tells our hero that his daughter has gotten involved with would-be bank robbers.  "I cant get through to her," he  complains.  "It's like I'm not even there."

So Sammy wants our hero to stop the robbery and save his daughter.  "You owe me,"  he insists.  But will a robbery really take place?  And if it does, how can the cop explain what he knows? 

Wonderfully written, one-of-a-kind plot.  Highly recommended.

Frank, by Steve Hockensmith

"Frank" by Steve Hockensmith, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, October 2012.

I admit I may be biased in favor of this story, simply because of its subject matter, which is one my family is dealing with currently.

Frank is a retired police detective, living in an assisted living complex.  Frank's memory is, at best, shaky.  He can't always remember what day it is, or the names of his neighbors (although in the case of at least one neighbor's name, Hockensmith notes drolly, "forgetting it had been a choice.")

But now a series of crimes are happening in the complex -- maybe.  Unless someone is imagining it in senile dimensia.  Can Frank pull himself together long enough to catch the culprit?  And what if he is the culprit?

Witty, touching, and a  twist at the end.  What more do you want?