It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Girl! by Jeff Cohen

"It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Girl!" by Jeff Cohen, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2017.

Years ago Akashic Press published Baltimore Noir and it had a story by Charlie Stella.  I don't remember anything about that tale except that as soon as it was done I thought: I gotta get me some Charlie Stella books.

And of course, that's one reason novelists write short stories.  Getting paid to advertise your books is pretty cool.

All of which brings me to Jeff Cohen, who also writes under the name EJ Copperman.  Based on this story I gotta get me some Jeff Cohen books.

Elliot runs a movie theatre that shows nothing but comedies, most of them old.  That may explain why Sharon, a doctor, divorced him years ago.  Harder to explain  is that she's  about to have Elliot's baby.  Like today.

Elliot rushes her to the hospital and promptly bumbles into a supply closet where a man in scrubs seems to be in the act of killing a woman in scrubs with a knife. Awkward.

And when he gets hospital security and they rush back to the closet there is no one there.  No sign of a struggle.  Which leads the cops to question our hero.

"Why are you here in the hospital today, sir?
"My ex-wife is having a baby."

Oh, yeah.  That sounds good, doesn't it?

Cohen writes funny.  Here is Elliot talking to his wife.

"You keep a civil tongue in your head, young lady, or I'll marry you again."
"In your dreams."

The Montclair Dead-Star Comedy Revue, by Michael Mallory

"The Montclair Dead-Star Comedy Revue," by Michael Mallory, in The Mystery Weekly Magazine, May, 2017.

First of all, congratulations to The Mystery Weekly Magazine.  I understand that a story they published will be in the 2017 edition of Otto Penzler's Best American Mystery Stories, and another made the Distinguished Story list in the back.  That ain't no small stuff.

This is a good issue and the best story I have read so far is this historical show biz tale by my friend Mike Mallory, making his third appearance in this space.

Buddy Barker is short, fat, and funny.  He was born to be a second banana comedian in vaudeville, but it's the 1950s and vaudeville is dead.  Lucky for him he has found a job in live TV.  Unlucky for him somone commits a murder in the theater.  The producer decides that Buddy, who is liked by everybody involved, is the right guy to look into the matter for him.

But playing detective is not one of Buddy's specialties.  He's trying to stay out of the way of the cops and - much worse - an investigator for the House UnAmerican Activities Committee.

The story has some clever twists and the murderer's, shall we say, career path, is unique.

Money Maker, by Jas. R. Petrin

"Money Maker," by Jas. R. Petrin, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2017.

I admit to being a major fan of Leo "Skig" Slorzeny.  This is his fourth appearance in my weekly best list.

Petrin's protagonist is an aging loanshark in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  There is a "demon" eating up his guts - in earlier stories it was an "imp," so I guess it is getting worse - and it will kill him if one of his many enemies don't get around to it first. 

In this story Skig has done an unnamed favor for a couple of Maine crooks and they send him the agreed upon fee.  Unfortunately, half of it turns out to be counterfeit so Skig sets out to figure out who along the line of shipment shorted him.

He is accompanied by his sidekick, Creepy Culbertson, who fixes cars in the garage that Skig has renovated into living quarters.

"I'm in."
"I thought you had a front-end alighment to do."
"It can wait."
"Won't your customer be wanting his wheels back?"
"Don't see why.  He don't even have a driver's license.  I'd be doing the world a favor, keeping that boozehound off the road." 

Not exactly the dialog of Holmes and Watson.  But that is one of the joys of these stories: the tough guy characters sound tough.   So does the narrator, describing a crime scene:

Under the chairs a sight the media might describe as "distressing to some viewers."

Another highlight of this story is meeting Saul,  Skig's attorney for, I believe, the first time.  Here they are having lunch.

"And you went to meet this man so that you could..."
"Take a delivery.  A sack of cash."
Saul clucked his tongue.  "The kitchen's noisy.  I didn't hear that."
"The kitchen's at the other end of the room."
"Yes.  They're incredibly clumsy in there."

 But the highlight of any Skig story is Skig.  People underestimate the aging thug in all sorts of ways. 
"There's nothing nice about me. Nothing at all," he says, after doing something nice. No heart of gold here, he insists,  merely balancing the books.  And that's a subject  of importance to any loanshark.

A Clown at Midnight, by Marc Bilgrey

"A Clown at Midnight," by Marc Bilgrey, in Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, #22.

I have talked before about the characteristics my favorite stories tend to have in common.  One is "heightened language," by which I mean that the words do something more than just get you from the beginning to the end of the tale.  Usually that means high-falutin' talk, but in this case, it is the flat, declarative sentences that Bilgrey uses to ground us in a bizarre tale.

Stevens asked Jack if he knew what time it was.  Jack shrugged and said that he thought it was about ten thirty.  Stevens told him it was eleven and that the store opened at ten.  Stevens frowned and said that had this been an isolated incident...

 Jack dreams of a creepy clown.  He has done it all his life: a recurring nightmare of a clown who chases him and tries to strangle him.  This has ruined his life, destroying his sleep, which loses him jobs, ruins relationships, etc.   Various treatments have been no help at all.

A friend suggests a hypnotist who helps him find the root of the problem: an actual assault when he was seven.  With some clever research he figures out who that clown had been.  Now, what to do about it?

It might be time to remember the old saying, supposedly from Confucius, about what you should do before you seek revenge...

Double Slay, by Joseph D'Agnese

"Double Slay," by Joseph D'Agnese, in Mystery Weekly Magazine, April 2017.

For some reason suspense and humor go very well together.  Ask Alfred Hitchcock or my friend Joseph D'Agnese.

This story is about Stan and Candace, a cheerful retired couple traveling through Canada towards Alaska.  They pick up a hitchhiker who informs them that he is a serial killer.

Uh oh.

But don't despair.  Turns out he's not a very good serial killer.  In fact, if he manages the job this may be his first successful killing.  And that's a big if...

Made me laugh.

Game, Set, Match, by Zoe Burke

"Game, Set, Match," by Zoe Burke in Bound by Mystery, edited by Diane D. DiBiase, Poisoned Pen Press, 2017.

Macy Evans is a middle-aged woman who has just been kidnapped by a younger man.  He has locked her in his basement and his plans for her future seem vague, or rather changeable. They seem to involve his wife and Macy's husband, and one or more persons leaving this mortal coil.  And you can bet that will happen.

This story has a sizeable  plot hole (unless I am missing something).  But I liked the style and suspense.

Bleak Future, by MItch Alderman.

"Bleak Future," by Mitch Alderman, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2017.

I am very fond of Mitch Alderman's stories about Bubba Simms, the best and largest private eye in Winter Haven, Florida.  (His hobbies are eating and working out.)

 His client this time is a wealthy heavy equipment dealer named Hank Langborn, who is dying of cancer.  "I've been putting my ducks in a row before flying south for the long winter."

Someone is threatening Hank's grandchildren and he wants Bubba to find the bad guy.  Bubba is afraid if he does Hank will kill the villain.  What does a dying man have to lose?

There are surprises in store, both in terms of the bad guy's identity and how the case is resolved.  Bubba is always an enjoyable comanion.

Just Like In The Movies, by Kate Thornton

"Just Like In The Movies," by Kate Thornton, in Inhuman Condition, Denouement Press, 2010.

The author gave me this book two years ago and I have been shamefully slow about getting around to reading it. 

Are you familiar with cryptic crosswords?  These are popular in England; never caught on much here.  Each clue is a puzzle in itself.  Wikipedia gives the example of: Very sad unfinished story about rising smoke (8) which is a clue for the word "Tragical."  Go to the article if you want to see how that works.  It baffles me.

Which has nothing to do with Thornton's story, but have faith.  We will get there.

Years ago I read about one of the famous setters (i.e. creators) of cryptic crosswords who created a puzzle in which the first clue could lead to two possible answers, one correct and one almost correct.  Whichever of those you chose you could answer all the clues successfully - until the very last one.  If you started down the wrong path, you wound up with one one final clue you could not answer.

And that almost  brings us to Thornton's story.  The narrator is a teenage girl who compares herself to Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window.  She has been watching a lot of movies because she can't leave the house.  Not because of a broken leg like Jimmy, but because of a monitoring device on her ankle.  Seems she brought a knife to school for protection, and they accused her of some other stuff she denies.

When she's not watching the TV she watches her neighbors the Blatniks, who fight a lot, often about the wife's brother, Norm.  Mr. Blatnik clearly doesn't want his brother-in-law around, for some reason.  Like maybe he's done something worse than bring a knife to school.  And now Norm is interested in our narrator...

At one point in the story there is a sentence that can be read two ways, just like that first cryptic crossword clue, and if you interpret it the wrong way (trust me, you will), Thornton will lead you merrily in the wrong direction.  And that's a very enjoyable trip.

Underground Above Ground, by Robert Tippee,

"Underground Above Ground," by Robert Tippee, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2017.

So, when do you know you are reading a terrific story?

Sometimes there's a knock-em-dead opening paragraph and you spend the rest of the story thinking: Don't blow this.

Sometimes a story starts slow and builds and builds.

And some stories take your breath away with a great twist ending.

But maybe the rarest is the story that catches you later, because you can't stop thinking about it.  You read it again, not because you want to figure out how a trick ending worked, but because you want to savor the nuances, admire the architecture.

In other words: I had to sit with this one for a while, as the saying goes.

The nameless narrator is a young man who has mastered the art of disappearing.  He dresses in black, with a stocking cap that hides his face.  And as the story begins, it is after ten PM and he is sitting in the darkness near a city tennis court, watching a young man and his beautiful girlfriend as they volley the ball, flirt, and discuss Facebook.

Facebook.  They ought to call it "Gutspill."  I don't do Facebook.  Somebody like me can't.  But why would anybody?

This is a guy with nobody to "friend" on Facebook anyway.  It's clear that there are bad things in our narrator's past, although it is not clear at first whether they were done to him, by him, or both.

And then the story takes several unexpected twists, which is all I can say.  Except this: I loved it.

Renters, by Tim L. Williams

"Renters," by Tim L. Williams, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2017.

It's rural Kentucky in the mid-eighties, a hard time in a hard place.  Davy is fifteen years old.  His father, a Vietnam vet, lost his job years ago and now puts food on the table hunting and fishing.  Dad has what we might call anger issues.  When his wife said something he didn't like he: "grabbed her by her hair, dragged her to the back door, and threw her into the yard.  'Come back in when you find a cure for stupid.'"

The fourth character in this situation is the family's landlord, Ben Daniels, the richest man in the county.  Daniels wants to bring rich tourists to hunt on his land, which means he has to stop Davy's dad from hunting there for the pot.  Oh, did I mention that Davy's mother is young and beautiful and when she is around the good-looking landlord has "busy eyes?"

So we have all the makings of a tragedy here.  The only question is who is going to end up doing what to whom.  And there Williams offers us some surprises, which is what I liked best about this well-written story.

  "There are some things that need killing..."