The Trouble with Rebecca, by Larry Light

"The Trouble with Rebecca," by Larry Light, in Alfred Htichcock's Mystery Magazine, November/December 2021. 

Generally a piece of fiction has a premise (woman comes to private detectives seeking protection; one of them is promptly killed) and a plot (see, there's this statue of a bird rom Malta, and some very bad guys want it...).

And also generally, a reviewer can discuss the premise but shouldn't give away too much of the plot.  This becomes a problem if the story is halfway over before the premise is clear.  So I will be revealing a lot of the set-up because, what else can I do?  Discuss the punctuation?

Max is a "tech geek," working for a company that does hush-hush security stuff.  Because he hates the social side of work he invents Rebecca, a non-existent wife.  This imaginary person is his excuse to avoid after-work events and the like.

All goes well until he falls in love with a flesh-and-blood co-worker.  His tightly zipped employer does not approve of infidelity.  Leaving Max with a thorny dilemma:

How do you rid yourself of a wife who does not actually exist?

This story is a real treat.  

 

Back Down to Black, by Andrew Welsh-Huggins

"Back Down to Black," by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, in Mystery Magazine, November 2021. 

This is the fourth appearance here by Welsh-Huggins,and I think it is the second appearance by protagonist Mercury Carter.  It's hard to tell because the hero of "The Mailman" is nameless, as far as I can tell.  They certainly seem to be the same guy.

So who is that guy?  He's a delivery man, the person you contact when the package absolutely, positively needs to be there on time - and bad guys are ready to kill to prevent that.  In the first story the package was two people.  Today it is a flash drive full of potentially life-saving data needed by a virologist.

Someone once described Thomas Perry's novels as "competence porn," meaning that his protagonists don't make mistakes and have whatever skills they need.  We are in that territory here.

Here is Carter reacting to someone putting a gun against the back of his head and telling him "Don't do anything stupid."

'Sure,' said Carter, and did something stupid, driving his left elbow back into the man's chest.  Carter was hardly big enough to do any kind of damage with such a move, which almost any schoolboy could manage better, but it startled No. 4 and the gun barrel slipped off Carter's neck momentarily and he turned and broke the man's nose with his left palm, rocketing his hand forward like a power to the people salute gone terribly wrong.

Actually the character reminds me less of Perry's heroes than of Richard Stark's Parker, although Carter appears to be a good guy.  A most enjoyable story.

Night Bus by Ellen Clair Lamb

 

"Night Bus," by Ellen Clair Lamb, in This Time For Sure: Bouchercon Anthology 2021, edited by Hank Phillippi Ryan,  Down & Out Books, 2021. 

The writing advice for decades has been: Start as far along in the action as you can.  If backstory is necessary, you can fill it in after drawing the reader into the story.  One result  of that is that a lot of the time the mystery is not "Who done it?" but "What was done?"  

Jodie is getting on a bus late at night and she wants to be left alone. Unfortunately the last seat open is next to a chipper old lady who is eager to chat.  Her name is Barbara and she is observant, too observant for Jodie's liking because Jodie has a secret to keep.  And that secret - what was done? - will keep you turning pages.  

Just like last week (and from the same book) it is the last sentence that made this story my favorite.  Very clever tale.

Killing Calhoun Again, by Alan Orloff

 "Killing Calhoun Again," by Alan Orloff, in This Time For Sure: Bouchercon Anthology 2021, edited by Hank Phillippi Ryan,  Down & Out Books, 2021. 

"The first time I killed Royce Calhoun I’d been floating on three Wild Turkeys and a raft of rage."

And so we begin.  Jake Pardee got jealous because Calhoun had been "doing the nasty" with his girlfriend Angela May, so he shot him, twice., and then took off  Apparently he should have gone for the hat trick, because Jake's friend Mouse tells him that Calhoun is back, insufficiently dead, and still hanging around with Angela May.  

"I had no reason to doubt Mouse, not about this anyhow. He spouted some conspiracy nonsense at times, and he had trouble always knowing right from wrong, but when it came to something like this— ratting someone out— he was usually dead on."

Charming language these low-lifes speak. 

I admit it was the last sentence of the story - not so much a twist as a punchline - that made this my favorite of the week. 

The Big Store, by Terence Faherty

 

"The Big Store," by Terence Faherty, in Monkey Business:Crime Fiction Inspired by the Films of the Marx Brothers, edited by Josh Pachter, Untreed Reads, 2021.

I have a story in this book.

This is the eighth appearance in this space by my fellow SleuthSayer Terence Faherty.

Last week I wrote about a story in this book that gave us a view of the Marx Brothers as they might have appeared in real life  Today we go to the opposite extreme with a story that could be a sequel to the movie in question -  and it's odd that such a bad movie could lead to such a good story.

Our narrator is private eye Wolf J. Flywheel. Groucho's character. Based on his success in saving Martha Phelps' department store in the movie  he now has an office in her shop and is pursuing his detective business while also pursuing the boss.

"Martha, Martha, Martha. I could say her name a million times. Once for every greenback she has in the bank."

If his motives are less than pure, his language is pretty hilarious, and convincingly Marxist.

"The department store business is one tough racket. Machine Gun Kelly once tried to return a violin case to Macy’s without a receipt and ended up kissing the sidewalk."

I won't go into the plot.  Let's just say mischief is afoot and Flywheel has to rush to the rescue with the assistance, if that;s the word I'm searching for, of an Italian blackmailer and a silent harpist.    Good times.

A Day at the Races, by Joseph S. Walker

 

"A Day at the Races," by Joseph S. Walker, in Monkey Business:Crime Fiction Inspired by the Films of the Marx Brothers, edited by Josh Pachter, Untreed Reads, 2021.

I have a story in this book.

This is the third appearance here by Joseph S. Walker, the second this year.

One of the interesting things about an anthology like this one is seeing the many different ways authors interpret the theme.  Some use the plot of the film as a jumping-off place.  Others work with the on-screen personas of the brothers.  This is the first one I have read that tries to show us our heroes as they might have appeared in real life.

Julia Simmons is the head of personnel and payroll at Santa Anita Racetrack and this is the day before the film crew will arrive to shoot the racing scenes for the new Marx Brothers movie.  Unfortunately it is also the day that the manager of the track is murdered.  The handsome detective in charge of investigating the case has many questions which keeps Julia rushing back to her office - where an odd little man in a gray suit is hanging around for no apparent reason.  We will figure out his part in the story long before she does, but it's fun hearing his commentary on the action.

There's a lot of wit in this tale, and a satisfactory plot.

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.