A Rat Tale, by Mark Thielman

"A Rat Tale," by Mark Thielman, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2022.

 Mark Thielman, my fellow SleuthSayer, is having a good year  This is his third appearance on my list in 2022 and his ninth overall, which I believe has him tied at the top.  It is also the second story in this series to make my best-of-the-week list. 

Bernard de Vallenchin is a sixteenth century French attorney with an odd specialty.  Medieval law allowed animals to be tried for their alleged crimes.In this case the farmers of a region are demanding that rats be punished for ravishing their crops.  Our advocate faces penalties if he can't find an adequate defense.

What follows is what they refer to in TV legal dramas as "winning on a technicality," as de Vallenchin embraces the skewed logic that says rodents can be taken to court.  A very funny story, based on an actual case. 

Paying the Ferryman, by E.J. Wagner

 

"Paying the Ferryman," by E.J. Wagner, in Jewish Noir II, edited by Kenneth Wishnia and Chantelle Aimee Osman, PM Press, 2022.

I have said before that my favorite short stories tend to have at least one of these characteristics: great characters, a twist ending, a great concept, or heightened language.

By heightened language I mean that the words do more than get you from the title to the last page.  In effect, they express a world view. This could be  style as flat as Hemingway or as Baroque as Faulkner.

Which brings us to the opening of Wagner's story.

He tells Judith that he loves her. 

They face each other across the butcher'-block counter, the one made fifteen years ago in the first months of their marriage.  She slices sweet peppers for their dinner -- the peppers are bright green, red, and yellow, and she loves the look of them as she slides them into a big white bowl...

He tells her that he truly loves her, and has since they met, but that he -- and here he smiles sadly -- he has fallen deeply, desperately, passionately in live with Hadassah Sharon, the Israeli graduate student he is mentoring, and that he simply can't control his feelings because they're overwhelming.  It is bashert -- predestined.

I skipped a few paragraphs but this gives you some idea of what Wagner is doing.  The rich detail.  The oblivious egotism of the husband.  

Imagine if this story in the more customary style: past tense, with the husband's words in quotation marks.  Some of the magic vanishes.  The story becomes ordinary.

The rest of the story tells how Judith responds to hubby's announcement.  It is a neat tale, neatly told. 

You may wonder why a story in Jewish Noir II has a title referring to Greek mythology.  Well, there are at least two links, as you will see if you read it.  And I hope you do.

 

Do-Ye0n Performs a Cost-Benefit Analysis, by Mark Niemann-Ross

"Do-Ye0n Performs a Cost-Benefit Analysis on a Career Based on Questionable Activities," by Mark Niemann-Ross, in Crooked 2,  edited by Jessie Kwak, Bad Intentions Press, 2022.

Oddly enough, this is the second story I reviewed this month which qualifies as science fiction.  Both are set in the near future and involve a society in which one's access to resources is strictly regimented by one's activities.  

In Thielman's story your ability to progress depends on your perceived good citizenship. In Niemann-Ross's world it depends on what job you can get.

And Do-Ye0n is stuck at Level One because of a screw-up he made at his last position.  His automated job coach tells him he can get a job in "corporate network penetrative testing," which is to say ransomware.  

It is highly lucrative, and legal.  Well, sort of legal.  Unless some agency, or some other entity decides it would be better to make it temporarily illegal...

Robert Heinlein wrote a novella called "If This Goes On--" and that is one of my favorite types of science fiction: the one that extrapolates from what the author sees as a growing trend in our society.  Niemann-Ross has written an interesting example.

The Relentless Flow of the Amazon, by Jonathan Stone

"The Relentless Flow of the Amazon," by Jonathan Stone, in Mystery Writers of America Presents: Crime Hits Home,  edited by S.J. Rozan, Hanover Square Press, 2022.

I have said before that sometimes a story begins so strongly, with fine writing and a clever concept, that by the end of the first page I am rooting for the writer: Don't screw this up.  We have an example of that today.

It is the beginning of the great lockdown, "the time of boxes.  Everything delivered." Annie and Tom,  new to their suburban neighborhood, are getting tons of boxes which they leave in their garage to give the virus time to wander off.

One day they get an Amazon box they are not expecting.  It contains two plastic but clearly real guns.  How the hell did that get delivered?  Why?  Should Annie and Tom tell the cops, trying to explain what happened?  And who wants cops wandering around their house, breathing their bugs on them?

Maybe they can just put the guns away and forget about them. Besides, as Tom points out, it's not like there's any ammunition.

I bet you can guess what arrives in the next load of packages.

Things get wilder and I won't give anything away.  I had a ball.

The Cost of Something Priceless, by Elizabeth Zelvin

"The Cost of Something Priceless," by Elizabeth Zelvin, in Jewish Noir II, edited by Kenneth Wishnia and Chantelle Aimee Osman, PM Press, 2022.

This is the second appearance here by my fellow SleuthSayer. Zelvin has written other novels and stories about the Mendozas, a fictional family of Sephardic Jews, some of whom sailed with Columbus. 

 And this tale combines two generations widely divided by time.  The story begins as a letter from a modern Mendoza bequeathing to her granddaughter the family's most precious treasures: a necklace and the documents proving it belongs to them.  But there is a lot more to her history than that.

Intertwined with this tale is the third-person story of how Rachel Mendoza really acquired the necklace half a millennium ago.  Let's say that both women found their way through considerable difficulties.

My favorite part of the story is Grandma trying to explain life in the 1950s to her grandchild, and especially what it meant for her to marry a WASP.

People say so glibly that two people come from different worlds.  Everyone said it about Foster and me.  I laughed it off.  I had no idea what it meant.  Take "going to Princeton."  When a Jewish boy went to New York went to Princeton, it meant he was exceptionally smart.  He'd competed successfully in academics, athletics, and an array of showy "extracurricular activities," to make the extremely small quota of New York Jews the university was prepared to tolerate.  When Foster Gale Bentbridge IV went to Princeton, it means that Foster Gale Bentbridge I, II, and III had gone to Princeton. Period.

A skillful story with a powerful ending.

 

Future Tense, by Mark Thielman

"Future Tense," by Mark Thielman, in Black Cat Magazine, #57. 2022. 

This marks the eighth appearance by my fellow SleuthSayer, Mark Thielman, this time with a story set in the near future.  I assume it was inspired by this program.

Terran Korb and his pregnant wife want to move to a better apartment in a safer neighborhood.  But that requires more Citizenship Points.  The cameras of the Panopticon are constantly on watch, looking for good and bad behavior.  Pick up litter?  Good.  Fail to smile at your neighbors?  Bad. 

It doesn't seem like Korb will ever score enough points to get what he wants.  But there are rumors about brokers, people who have learned to work the system, and can set you up with the points you need.  But when you make a deal like that there is always a price to be paid...

This story is  a treat.

Banana Island, by Susan Breen

"Banana Island," by Susan Breen, in Mystery Writers of America Presents: Crime Hits Home,  edited by S.J. Rozan, Hanover Square Press, 2022.

This is the third appearance in this space by Susan Breen, and her second this year.  That's a rare thing.

Marly is a scam baiter for the IRS.  I knew there were amateurs doing this work for fun, but are there really professionals?  Cool.  Marly engages with scam artists, ideally to catch them, but at least to keep them busy so they are not robbing the gullible.

 Marly has been spending a lot of time on the phone with a Nigerian who she believes is a con artist, but she can't quite convince him to ask for money.  In fact, he seems a bit of a charmer.  To raise the stakes she tells him about the situation her family is facing: Most of the members live in Long Island City, where homes are shooting up in value. A realtor just made a blind offer of two million dollars for Marly's house.  Her Nigerian pal urges her to take it, of course.

But the family turns out to have bigger problems than the real estate boom.  And as things get more dangerous Marly has a harder time figuring who the good guys are.  I very much enjoyed this twisty tale.

The Golden Coffin, by Emory Holmes II

 

"The Golden Coffin," by Emory Holmes II, in South Central Noir, edited by Gary Phillips, Akashic Press, 2022.

The publisher sent me a free copy of this book.

I occasionally lament the lack of historical mysteries in Akashic's Noir Cities series.  This is a good one.

It's 1935.  Prometheus Drummond, a young teenager, has hopped freight trains from his collapsed home in hopes of living with his Uncle Balthazar, the manager of a high-class Negro hotel in Los Angeles.  His uncle gives him the post of factotum. "That mean, every damn thing I say is a fact.  And if I point to a heap of satchels yonder but the elevator, I expects you to hop up and tote 'em where they needs to go.  Fact-tote-um -- get me?"

Dialog is one of the strengths of the story. Another is the depth of detail Holmes gives us about life in South Central in the time.

As for crime, someone is murdering young Black women. Prometheus discovered one of the victims.  The city and the police force isn't much interested, but a smart Negro cop named Kimbrow has figured out the pattern.  Can they catch the bad guy before he kills again?

I have written enough historical mysteries to know how hard it is to avoid anachronisms but I have to say: according to the Google Ngram Viewer the phrase "media outlet" didn't arrive until decades after the time this story is set in.  But that's about the only criticism I can make of this fine tale.

 

Cold Case, by Bev Vincent

 

"Cold Case," by Bev Vincent, in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, Issue 12, 2022.

This is the second story by Vincent to make my best-of list.

I think it might have been my friend Michael Mallory who predicted that an increasing number of mysteries would be set in the pre-cell phone era, because those modern marvels make so many tropes of our field ridiculous.  (It's bad enough for the hero to enter the villain's lair without back-up, but when he can get help just by reaching into his pocket...)

Bev Vincent, on the other hand, demonstrates how you can make use of recent technology (and current events) to build a story.

Roger is a retired chemist living in Texas in the recent record-breaking cold spell.  One frosty morning he finds a dead man sitting on his porch. When the police arrive he refuses to let them into the house, due to COVID fears, which does not endear him to the shivering constabulatory.  So Roger, with plenty of time on his hands, decides to investigate.

Let's try to count the tech involved in this tale: cell phones, Google, Zoom, video doorbells, NextDoor... I may have missed some.  Not bad for a retired guy.

On top of that the story is witty. When a neighbor comes over dressed for the cold weather we get this:

"Is that really you in there?" he asked.

"I can see you," she said. "Undressing me with your eyes."

"That'd be a job," Roger said, hoping she couldn't see him blush.

The story is  a treat.

Deconstruction, by David Dean

"Deconstruction," by David Dean, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September/October 2022.

 This is the sixth appearance by my fellow SleuthSayer on this page. 

Bruce is terribly excited to get his first permanent job as an electrician for a construction company.  But problems start piling up.  His coworker/roommate is a pothead who seems to only keep his job because the boss is his uncle.  And then there is a lot of equipment from other contractors going missing.  By the way, whatever happened to the guy Bruce replaced?

From the very beginning you can guess where this story is going but you will enjoy the trip.