Providence, by Clark Boyd

 "Providence," by Clark Boyd, in This Time For Sure, edited by Hank Phillippi Ryan, edited by Down and Out, 2021. 

Xavier has job satisfaction problems.  He's a hitman for One Shot Valenti and he doesn't feel a lot of job security.  This is a business where getting laid off involves ceasing to breath.

Our hero has an interesting view of the world.  Here he is watching a baseball game: "[W]hen there’s a conference on the mound, I amuse myself by pretending, aloud, that they’re discussing existentialist philosophy. “Coach, I can get this guy. Take a leap of faith.” “But Pedro, did the great Dane not also say, ‘The specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair?’ Now hand me the goddamn ball."

Honestly I didn't find the plot all that convincing, but the characters are dialog are more than worth the ride.

 

Funeral Games, by Hal Bodner

"Funeral Games," by Hal Bodner, in Avenging Angelenos, edited by Sarah M. Chen, Wrona Gall and Pamela Samuels Young, Down and Out Books, 2021.

This is a very silly story.  That is not an insult.

Southern California's funeral industry is viciously competitive when it comes to celebrity funerals.  People measure a memorial park's cachet by how many stars are buried on-site.  Needless to say, the plots and crypts are priced accordingly.  It never fails to astonish me how many people will pay top dollar to spend their eternal rest within spitting distance of a rock star when in life, they'd have been outraged by the loud parties next door and called the police on the groupies throwing up on their lawn.

Mickey owns one such memorial park.  His nemesis and ex-lover is the wonderfully named Julia Shrike.  They will do anything to steal top-of-their-fame dead rockers or even over-the-hill movie stars from each other.  Bribery, lies, and even grave-robbing are not off the menu.

As the tit-for-tat escalates it is anyone's guess who will wind up on top.  Great fun.

Incident at a Diner, by Chris Miller

 "Incident at a Diner," by Chris Miller, in Dead-End Jobs: A Hitman Anthology, edited by Andy Rausch, All Due Respect, 2021.

This is one of those stories that grew on me, meaning I liked it better the more I thought about it.  There are so many moving pieces it takes a while to sort everything out.

Sam and Millie are meeting for breakfast in a diner in rural Texas.  They are deep in lust and soaking in guilt because Sam is cheating on his wife.  

But they aren't the only people having trouble in that joint.  A man and woman are arguing furiously about something.  Two gangster-types from New Jersey are complaining about an associate has screwed up.  And then there's the old cowboy who seems to have his own agenda.  How is this all going to work out? And, let's remember: why is this story in a book about hit men?

The climax surprised me a lot.

A Hell of a Thing, by Wayne J. Gardiner

 "A Hell of a Thing," by Wayne J. Gardiner, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2021.

This is the second appearance here by Wayne J. Gardiner.  It doesn't have a complicated plot, more of a slice-of-life story.  

On the first page Carly does something most officers never need to do in their whole careers: fire her weapon in action.  In fact, she shoots three armed robbers and she shoots them all dead.

The rest of the story is about her trying to find ways to cope with her reactions and those of the people around her.  And, perhaps inevitably, there is a niggling self-doubt: Is she sure the first robber was turning his gun toward her?

It is a moving tale, well-told.

Glass, by James R. Benn

 "Glass," by James R. Benn, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2021.

One of the many reasons AHMM is my favorite magazine is that they occasionally take a chance on a crime-related story from a different genre.  This story, for example, has a clear science fiction orientation.

The proton moved an at insane speed.  If it had been capable of fear, it would have been terrified.  Contained within an oval tube, traveling just short of the speed of light, it whipped around the 54.1-mile circuit ceaselessly as other protons shout past it from the opposite direction.  Collisions sparked all around it, sending smashed protons against the smooth metalic surface which contained its universe.

 That's the start.  We follow the path of this proton for an entire page before things go awry. The superconducting super-collider goes boom and a piece of 21st-century technology is blasted back through time to 1965 where it is discovered by hapless recently-fired salesman Guy Tupper.  Guy brings it to his cousin Jerry who runs a repair shop.  Together they figure out just enough to get the device working, and then...

Well.  That would be telling.

There is a clever roman a clef here, with a well-known writer being referenced under a transparent pseudonym.  The best part is that the plots of his novels fit spookily to the situation Guy and Jerry find themselves in.

There is a twist in this tale that made me gasp audibly.  That doesn't happen very often.

 

The Stain of Memory, by Thomas K. Carpenter

 "The Stain of Memory," by Thomas K. Carpenter, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2021.

This is the second appearance in this column by Carpenter and his Roman detective.

Carpenter's Ovid is not the great poet, but a magistrate serving in a poor neighborhood of Alexandria.  He is a long ways from a conventional hero, modern or Roman, being overweight and somewhat dithering.  But he is clever, and honest, and has an excellent grasp of Roman law, which is vital because these stories tend to turn on quirks of this legal system.

As usual, Ovid finds himself between a rock and a hard place.  To be specific, his boss, who is in charge all the magistrates and the military in the city, has brought a charge against the governor.  Both of them demand that Ovid, as presiding magistrate, rule in their favor.  Either can destroy him at will.  

As I said, Ovid has been in tough spots before, but this time he learns something that makes the problem very personal.  So, in effect, he is his own client.  

A very clever story, and an excellent portrayal of the time period.  

Perfect Strangers, by Tilia Klebenov Jacobs

 "Perfect Strangers," by Tilia Klebenov Jacobs, in When A Stranger Comes To Town, edited by Michael Koryta, Hanover Square Press, 2021.

Gershom is finishing his second prison term for armed robbery when his cellmate Dougal points out the new gold mine: marijuana dispensaries.  Cash-rich and security-poor, they are a robber's dream.  So when he gets out Gershom begins to plan an elaborate robbery, because he does not intend to go down a third time...

The writing here is very witty. "Five years [in prison] went by like a snail with a hangover."  "If this went sideways, they'd lock me up and melt down the warden." And so on.

If you have read a few hundred stories like this you know something will go sideways,  But Jacobs found a clever and unexpected way to do that.

The Skull Collector, by Joe R. Lansdale

"The Skull Collector," by Joe R. Lansdale, in Collectibles, edited by Lawrence Block, LB Productions, 2021.

This is Lansdale's third appearance here.  

If a story is told in first person, style is character.  Here is our heroine describing her boss, a fence, dealing with a dissatisfied customer:

"He was a tough old guy, Ruby said.  Big, cold crack walnuts with harsh language, chase a squirrel up a tree with bad breath. She had to use an axe handle to sort the guy out a little.  It wasn't too bad.  He was able to leave on his own, though not without a certain amount of pain and difficulty..."  

That tells you a lot about Ruby, sure, but we also find out a lot about the narrator, especially that "It wasn't too bad." What does she consider a real problem?

Ruby has been hired by a Texas bigwig to steal a skull form a cemetery  -- I'll leave the reason for that a secret -- and she ropes our heroine in.  Things get worse.  Then they get worse.  And... you get the idea.

Here is the assistant fence describing the hasty exit made by two thugs: "Bridge Support and his Kemosabe left out of there so fast they didn't even leave body odor."

Yelena Tried to Kill Me, by Trey Dowell

 

"Yelena Tried to Kill Me," by Trey Dowell, in Mystery Weekly Magazine, August 2021.

"The first time I saw Yelena Nevsky, she tried to kill me."

Well, that opening line got my attention.  Our hero participates in armored duels at a renaissance fair.  Yelena, dressed in Russian medieval chain mail, battles him for the championship.  I won't tell you who wins, but the result is a romance.  

The protagonist's friend isn't buying it.  Why would a sexy Russian fall for a nothing like him?  And as a Russian cultural attache she must be a spy, right?  "And she's, what, stealing all the classified info I keep in my corner coffee shop?"

Maybe not, but something must be going on or this wouldn't be in a mystery magazine.  The story has some clever twists.

Sweeps Week, by Richard Helms

 "Sweeps Week," by Richard Helms, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2021.

This is the eighth appearance in this column by Richard Helms, and his third in 2021.  Somebody's having a good year.

I'm the Invisible Man.

That's the opening sentence.  The narrator is a homeless guy, an ex-cop.  An ex-dirty cop, he would be quick to add.

Sonny, a homeless guy with mental problems, has gone missing. Worse, a national political convention is coming to town, which means it is Sweeps Week.  That doesn't refer to the time when the TV networks put out their best, but the time when the city kicks out its worst - or at least most unpleasant-to-look-at.  

So our hero is trying to figure out what happened to Sonny.  One of the places  he looks is, well: "Hospital ER waiting rooms are like resort spas for homeless guys.  You get AC, free TV - even if they always seem to be tuned to the Disney channel -  and a place to sit unmolested as long as you don't draw attention to yourself."

Gritty and well-written.

A Career Spent Disappointing People, by Tod Goldberg

"A Career Spent Disappointing People," by Tod Goldberg, in Palm Springs Noir, edited by Barbara DeMarco-Barrett, Akashic Press, 2021.

The publisher sent me a free copy of this book.  

This is the second appearance here by Mr. Goldberg.

Shane leads an interesting life.  He makes part of his living singing karaoke.  He makes the rest of it robbing houses with his Gold Mike, using information gathered from the people who listened to him singing karaoke.

But that's in the past because when our story begins Shane has a bullet hole in his foot and several large chunks of Gold Mike in the trunk of his car.  These two facts are not unrelated.

When that car breaks down in a small desert town Shane finds himself in a bar having a conversation with an attorney and a clown. The attorney wants to give him advice, possibly have him as a client, and has another use for him in mind.  The clown, well, it takes a while to figure out what the clown wants.

A bizarre story of desperate people.  What made this the best-of-the-week for me was the ending, which I wouldn't characterize as a twist, but definitely a surprise.    

Sonny's Encore, by Michael Bracken

"Sonny's Encore," by Michael Bracken, in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, #9.

This is the ninth appearance in this column by my friend and fellow SleuthSayer Michael Bracken, which puts him in the lead, if this is a race, which of course it isn't.  This here is art.

The depression was hard on everyone, even big bands traveling through the south.  Sonny Goodman and his troupe of musicians have found a way to supplement their income with a little larceny.    But when things go wrong they go wrong in a big way.  That could be the end of the story, but Bracken has some surprises in store.

The fun of this story is the details of the well-thought-out capers.

The Candidate, by Tom Ziegler

 

"The Candidate," by Tom Ziegler, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July, August 2021.

It is unusual for me to select three stories from the same publication in a row.  It's not like I'm not reading others at the same time...

Frank is a bagman, collecting money all over the midwest for a crime organization in Chicago.  The old mob is changing with the times and wants Frank to take on a more varied role and he isn't sure if he wants to. But how easy is it to quit the mob?

Things come to a head when a famous (or infamous) character dies of natural but embarrassing causes in a brothel with mob collections.   Somehow erasing the connection turns out to be Frank's job.

What follows is a methodical operation with a few surprising twists. 

The Sweet Life, by Eve Fisher

 

"The Sweet Life," by Eve Fisher, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2021.

This is the third appearance here by my fellow SleuthSayer Eve Fisher.

As I have said before, some stories sneak up on you.  I'm not talking about surprise endings.  I'm talking about a story that you finish and think, "Well, that was okay," but then the next day you realize you're still thinking about it.  Maybe you reread it to catch more of the details.  As Paul Hanson said "I may be done with the book, but it’s not done with me.” 

This is one of those stories, for me anyway.

Carrie is a teenager who has had a rotten life.  She considers her time with Ethan to have been pretty good because, while he made her sell drugs, he didn't force her into prostitution.  That's a highlight.

When that arrangement collapses she lucks into a gig with an agency that cleans houses.  (She has to lie about her age, and other things.)  Turns out that's work she is happy with, even though some of the customers are a little weird.

But then Molly comes back into her life, and Molly is bad news.  Just the kind of person to steal something from a house they are cleaning and ruin it for everyone.  

What happens is more complicated than that, and more interesting.  Not a twist ending, but I definitely did not predict how the story turned out.

The Waiting Game, by Dana Haynes

 

"The Waiting Game," by Dana Haynes, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2021.

 This is the second time Haynes has appeared in these electrons.  It is my first encounter with his series characters, Fiero and Finnigan, who run  St. Nicholas  Salvage & Wrecking, which is actually a bounty hunter firm that chases international bad guys.  But that's not the problem they are dealing with here.

Finnigan has been kidnapped by very nasty Russians who want Fiero to revert to her old occupation of assassin.  Only she can get close to a certain target for them.  They show her a video of her business partner being beaten and promise to produce another film of him being clobbered every day until the job is done. Finnigan, we learn is locked in a cinder block bunker with an iron door; escape is impossible.

The Russians have a great plan. But as von Moltke said 150 years ago, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, and Fiero and Finnigan have no intention of following the bad guys' rule book.  I won't give anything away but will say they kept delighting and surprising me.  I was reminded of that classic TV show The Avengers.

One thing amused me: Finnigan is unimpressed by the beating or the lockdown but something upsets him.  He asks his captors to bring him a crossword puzzle book.  "But not Sudoku!  I hate that shit!" I wonder if Haynes knows where Dell Magazines (which published AHMM) makes a lot of their money?

 

Capes and Masks, by Richard Helms,

 

"Capes and Masks," by Richard Helms, Mystery Weekly Magazine, June 2021.

This is the third time in ten years of weekly reviews that I am featuring a story by the same author two weeks in a row.  (Mat Coward and Terrence Faherty were the others).

And except for quality, they couldn't be more different.  Last week I critiqued a war-and-crime story.  Today we have a quirky tale of a superhero, Captain Courageous:

"You know the story. Stolen by aliens who crashed my fourth birthday party.  Returned when I was seventeen, but I was somehow... different than when I left.  Well, duh,  I was thirteen years older, had all this weird hair growing where it never had, and my voice sounded like I was shaving a cat with a cheese greater."

If that sounds a bit... hardboiled... for a superhero it is no accident.  His cover identity is Eddie Shane, private eye.  He mostly deals with divorce work but when a caped dude named Sunburst is found mysteriously dead, this is no job for a superhero.  We need a detective to save the day.  

Very funny and clever.

Goodnight Saigon, by Richard Helms

 "Goodnight Saigon," by Richard Helms, in Only the Good Die Young: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Billy Joel, edited by Josh Pachter, Untreed Reads, 2021.

I have a story in this book.

This is the sixth appearance on this page by Richard Helms.  It is more war story than mystery but there is plenty enough crime to qualify.

And a riveting war story it is.  It's 1958 and soldier Owen Wheeler, for offenses unknown to him, has been transferred from a cushy assignment in Germany to a job in Vietnam training the nation's soldiers.  It wasn't supposed to be combat work "but once the black flag rose and the bullets flew, every man in a uniform was fair game."

Taking the trainees out on a long-range recon patrol Wheeler encounters deadly enemies, human and otherwise.  In the process he captures a Viet Cong soldier and brings him back for interrogation.  And that's when the story turns to crime, and gets very very twisty.

You'll want to read all the way to the satisfactory ending in one sitting.

Crown Jewel, by Joseph S. Walker

 "Crown Jewel," by Joseph S. Walker, in Moonlight and Misadventure, edited by Judy Penz Sheluk, Superior Shores Press, 2021. 

The publisher sent me a copy of this book.

This cheerful romp is the second appearance here by Walker.

Like all genres the mystery field is full of repeating tropes.  Locked rooms.  Dying messages.  Private eyes with drinking problems.

And identical twins. Lots of interesting ways to play with identical twins.  Whodunit when both who's look alike?

The late great Jack Ritchie loved mocking such memes and in one story his cop hero was broken-hearted when he realized that the identical twins had nothing to do with the solution to the crime.  So sad.

Which brings us to today's adventure, which is a tale of obsession.  Obsession tends to be funny or tragic depending on how close you are standing to the shrapnel.  this one is pretty funny.

Keenan Beech is a compulsive collector of vinyl, and his golden fleece is The Beatles, better known as the White Album.  You see, the first few million copies have a number stamped on the cover and collectors like Keenan keep buying, buying, buying them, trying to get closer to the elusive lower numbers.  Yeah, obsessive. 

But that's not his big problem.  That would be his identical twin Xavier.  Keenan is a hard working guy; Xavier is an unsuccessful scoundrel.  And when a record store offers Keenan a rare copy of the White Album for a mere five grand Xavier somehow gets his hands on it first by, duh, pretending to be Keenan.

Can our hero somehow steal the album back?  And if he does, will that just be the beginning of his troubles?  A cautionary tale for all the obsessive collectors out there.

The Case of the Brain Tuber, by Mark Thielman

 

"The Case of the Brain Tuber," by Mark Thielman, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, May/June 2021.

This is the sixth appearance here by my fellow SleuthSayer Mark Thielman, and the second by his unlikely hero.

Sheer silliness here.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The narrator is a private eye whose side gig is dressing up as a potato for marketing events at supermarkets.  They call him the Spud Stud.

But this time he gets to appear as a normal person for a special event at the Idaho Potato Museum. They are celebrating the newest inductees to the Potato Hall of Fame.  So get ready for tater-based humor.

The band is called the Twice-Baked.  The name tags were "shaped like small packages of freeze-dried hash browns." They are serving vodka (of course) but you can also get a sparkling wine called Potateau.

Like I said: silly.  But when one of the guests of honor dies and the cops are delayed the Spud Stud has to solve the crime. His method is clever.      

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.