If You Want Something Done Right..., by Sue Grafton

"If You Want Something Done Right...," by Sue Grafton, in Deadly Anniversaries, edited by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, Hanover Square Press, 2020.

The Blogger software is having one of its periodic breakdowns and won't let me put up a picture of the book cover.  I will try to fix this later.

Sue Grafton was one of the finest authors of private eye short stories.  I don't recall ever reading one of your tales that was not about PI. Kinsey Milhone before. But this one is terrific as well.

It falls into the familiar category of spouse-versus-spouse.  Lucy Burgess has reason to think her hubby is planning to get rid of her.  So she plans a preemptive strike, so to speak.

A lucky mistake puts her in touch with a hit man, and this fellow's way with words is a good deal of the charm of the story.

"Keeping my remarks entirely famatory, every matrimonial association is defeasible, am I right?  ...So what I hear you saying is that you and him are engaged in a parcenary relationship of which you'd like to see his participation shifted to the terminus."

Great fun.

Seat 9B, by Luke Foster

"Seat 9B," by Luke Foster, in Mystery Weekly Magazine, June 2020.

How much coincidence can a story stand?  An old rule of thumb is that a coincidence can be the premise of a story but not the climax.  You can start with two old schoolmates meeting by accident after ten years, but you had better not have that meeting happen at the end and the old schoolmate provides our hero with an alibi.  Another rule of thumb is that a story can tolerate one coincidence but not two.

The premise of this story is a huge coincidence.  A second one occurs later in the story, but it is a small, reasonable gimmick and I had no trouble forgiving it.  Okay, on to the plot.

The narrator, Garrison Dallas, is an investigative journalist, covering true crime for TV news shows.  On a flight from Los Angeles he suddenly realizes that the man he is sitting next to is the unknown serial killer the country's cops have been looking for.  And because Dallas has "the world's worst poker face," the killer immediately knows he knows.  And doesn't plan to let him get off the plane alive.

That's what you call a coincidence.

In my opinion this is where a lot of suspense stories get into trouble.  They come up with some limp reason for the hero not to scream for help, call the cops, do something logical which would stop the story in its tracks.

But i fact, this is the best part of our story.  Foster has come up with a strong reason our hero can't ask for help and it not only works, it makes other parts of the story seem more plausible.  A terrific and very suspenseful piece of work.

Honor Guard, by Tom Barlow

"Honor Guard," by Tom Barlow, in Columbus Noir, edited by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Akashic Press, 2020.

The publisher sent me an advance copy of this book. 

I must say I never thought of the birthplace of James Thurber as a particularly noir city, but so far this book is doing its best to prove me wrong.  (And by the way, if you love noir read Thurber's short story "The Whip-Poor-Will." )

One way of writing a crime story is to take something that happens to many of us and violently crank it up a notch.  The narrator is the only child of Tommy, a former navy man turned plumber.  (He stopped calling him "Dad" when he realized that the man's odd behavior "was the senility speaking."

Tommy is undergoing dementia which is making him violent, profane, and racist, not characteristics he had shown previously.  All very sad, and not an uncommon phenomenon in these modern times, but Barlow takes it up that notch.  On Veterans Day there is a violent confrontation with tragic consequences. 

Which is all very noir but would not have made this the best story of the week.  That is the result of several surprises.  Jeffery Deaver said "Short stories exist only to stun you."  This one qualifies.

All Big Men Are Dreamers, by Mary Anna Evans

"All Big Men Are Dreamers," by Mary Anna Evans, in The Faking of the President, edited by Peter Carlaftes, Three Rooms Press, 2020.

This book, subtitled "stories of White House noir," is alternative history and many of the tales are satiric. There's nothing wrong with that but this one is deadly serious.

It is a fact that Woodrow Wilson had  stroke in 1919 and a lot of his executive duties during the last year of his presidency were secretly carried out by his second wife, Edith Bolling. 

But in this story Wilson's romance with Edith is interrupted by the arrival of a charming lady named Clara.  Clara has some definite plans in mind, and they will change history.

Some stories, as I have written before, depend largely on finding the right viewpoint.  This one is told by Wilson's good friend and physician, who is also in love with Clara.  When he has to choose between two people he loves things get way complicated.  Very nice and very noir.

Borrowed Brains, by Alaric Hunt

"Borrowed Brains," by Alaric Hunt, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June 2020.

Funny thing: last month I was listening to an audiobook of short stories from Black Mask Magazine.  This novella is from Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's Black Mask department, and it is a perfect fit.  I must say I liked it better than some of the stories I heard from the classic magazine.

But this tale takes place in modern times (2005, to be exact), complete with cell phones, bodegas, and audio bugs.

Daniel McLaren, an aging West Virginian rumrunner, is happy working as a messenger in New York City, but when he gets beaten and robbed of a half-million dollar package the cops decide that the ex-convict is obviously guilty - or at least convenient to blame.

Fortunately McLaren has a buddy in the city, a fellow native of the Mountain State named Clayton Guthrie.  And Guthrie is a private eye.  Together they start to unravel a complicated fraud scheme that is going badly wrong, with possibly deadly consequences.

There is some wonderful writing in this story: "The alley was wide enough for two round trash cans and a cat."

Or here is McLaren casting some doubt on the reliability of a witness:

"You didn't notice his hat was lined with tinfoil?"
"I see a lot of that in Brooklyn.  Up in the Bronx, they wear their underwear outside their pants." 

And here is McLaren listening to the bad guys on a bug.

That sounds like the stupid one," and "No, maybe that's the stupid one."

A long ride, but a good one.

Noble Rot, by Richard Helms

"Noble Rot," by Richard Helms, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June 2020.

This is the fifth appearance in this slot by Richard Helms, and the third in for this series.

I recently wrote about the ambiguity of some subgenres.  It occurs to me  that I would not like to be on the Shamus Awards committee that has to decide whether this is a private eye story.

The narrator is definitely not a P.I. Boy Boatwright is a cop.  But he is really playing a reluctant Watson to Bowie Crapster.  The Crapster (wonderful name) is not a P.I. either.  He makes his living as a psychic and part of his shtick is using his alleged  magical powers to solve crimes. Does that qualify?  Beats me.

Boy and Bowie don't get along too well.  Witness this piece of phone conversation.

"There's been a murder."
"Please tell me you're the victim."

Ha ha.  Actually a woman has been slain at a winery during a fundraising party full of the rich and influential.  And since Crapster is a friend of the wealthy host/winemaker Boy has to tread lightly.

Helms is juggling a lot of balls in this story.  He has to tell a coherent story, provide clues, and allow Boy to figure out a non-psychic explanation for Crapster's apparently mystical solution. It's a lot of fun.

Dirty Laundry, by Michael Bracken

"Dirty Laundry," by Michael Bracken, in Tough, April 20, 2020.

This is the sixth appearance here by my friend and fellow SleuthSayer, Michael Bracken.  You can read it at the link above.

Sometimes it's nice to indulge in a private eye story.  They can have the inevitability of Greek tragedy.  Infinite variations in a familiar pattern.

Morris Boyette is the P.I., stationed in Waco, Texas.  His client is Julia Poe and the problem is that her brother and his wife were recently murdered.  Not that she wants him to solve a murder - that's the variation.  The killer has been caught.

But Julia's brother's in-laws have taken custody of their granddaughter and won't let Julia have any contact.  She wants Boyette to find a way around that.  Problem is the in-laws are the wealthiest people in town, a family that can definitely make Boyette's life more difficult.  And that's the familiar pattern. 

I enjoyed this very much.

One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest, by Kathy Krevat

"One Flu Over the Cuckoo's Nest," by Kathy Krevat, in Crossing Borders, edited by Lia Brackmann and Matt Coyle, Down and Out Books, 2020.

Timing is everything, so they say.

I'm sure the editors and author of this book had no idea what was heading at them when this book came out in February.  You see, the narrator of the very first story is a sentient virus.  Specifically an influenza bug.

The virus travels to a nursing home because it is scheduled to kill an old woman who lives there, but someone has already done that.  The virus, out of curiosity, tries to discover the killer.  It has certain abilities: like a lie detector machine it can detect changes in body patterns that might indicate deception.  And it can influence people in subtle ways...

A truly unusual story.

Free Man in Paris, by Brendan DuBois

"Free Man in Paris," by Brendan DuBois, in The Beat of Black Wings, edited by Josh Pachter, Untreed Reads, 2020.

On occasion I have judged contests which involved reading stories without knowing the identity of the author.  Reading this one, I wondered if my experience would have been different if I hadn't known who the author was.

The reason?  Well here is the first sentence:

Since Sloan's retirement, he has spent his fall and winter months in a remote villa in the village of Ilse-Sur-La-Sorgue in Provence in the south of France, and the spring and summer months in a comfortable and well-hidden flat in Paris.

My question: If I hadn't known that DuBois was the author, would I have instantly known that Sloan is an ex-spy?  Not that DuBois writes primarily about espionage.  Maybe it''s just that he writes well enough to set the mood immediately.  By the way, this is his eighth appearance in this column, which puts him in the lead ove rthe rest of the mystery-writing world, for now.

Back to Sloan who is, indeed, an ex-spy.  If one can ever stop being a spy.  He is constantly on watch for clues about his major concern:

...what really occupies his time is wondering if this is going to be the day when he will finally be killed.

And indeed on this day there is a threat on the horizon.  Watching how he deals with it is intriguing. A nicely written story.

Mixed Identities, by Martin Hill Ortiz

"Mixed Identities," by Martin Hill Ortiz, in Mystery Weekly Magazine, April 2020.

I'm glad I am not on the committee who has to decide if this story is eligible for the Shamus Award for best private eye story.

Our narrator is in a cabin in Northern California and a man has broken in and lies on the floor: "He had spilt enough blood to fill  jumbo jar of Ragu."  His name is Buddy Dale and he thinks our narrator  is the private eye who owns the cabin.

Luckily for him, the man who finds him is just a friend who is borrowing the P.I.'s cabin.  Lucky because the friend is a paramedic who knows how to stop the bleeding.

But Buddy has something else on his mind, perhaps more important than staying alive.  He's an ex-bank robber and someone has been copying his M.O., hoping to pin a series of crimes on him and send him back to prison for life.

Can our paramedic friend solve the crime?  Clever story.