Rats, by Tom Savage

"Rats," by Tom Savage, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Mystery, September/October 2018.

Are you familiar with the term logline?  Think of the one sentence description of a movie or a TV show you see in TV Guide or Netflix.

Here's a logline for a short story:

A senior citizen combats the bad element that is taking over the neighborhood.

I  have probably read a dozen stories that fit that line. Of course, there are no new plots, just new things to do with the old ones.  Is the senior alone or does he have allies?  What kind of plot does he dream up?  Does he succeed or fail?  I remember decades ago reading a story in which an older woman, tired of having her purse snatched, carried a hand grenade in the purse with a string tied from her wrist to the pin.  A mugger grabbed the purse and three seconds later, BOOM. 

But that's not Savage's idea.  Alice lives in New York City.  She still teaches a few days a week at a middle school.  She lives in a co-op which has always been  neighborly and well-maintained, but recently a dozen apartments were purchased by a Russian mobster.  Worse, he has moved his nephew, "a huge, unkempt, unfriendly, leather-jacketed hell-raiser named Georgi," into one of the apartments.  Things start to go downhill.  Alice's friend Marco, a retired circus performer gets robbed and beaten, and that's not the worst of it.

But when Alice sees the janitor putting out rat poison she gets an idea on how to solve the Georgi problem.  If only she can get Marco to go along with it.

I did not see the ending of this one coming.

Unity Con, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

"Unity Con," by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2018.

Rusch is one  of my favorite writers of mystery short stories.  She has appeared on this blog seven times, which ties her for first place with Brendan DuBois and Terence Faherty.  I believe she is more prolific in science fiction, which relates to this story.

It is strictly down-to-earth, but it is set in the world of science fiction fandom, and reflects on some events which have damaged that community in recent years.

Her series characters (making their third appearance in this blog) are dedicated members of the world of fandom.  The narrator, Spade, is a six-foot-six 400 pound Microsoft millionaire who uses his spare time and financial savvy to help with the money side of science fiction conventions.  His friend (and he wishes she were much more) is Paladin, a beautiful but brittle young private eye who specializes in fandom crimes and missing children.

Science fiction fandom is famous for tolerating or even embracing people lacking in social skills and these two have found happy homes in that world.  But the conflicts of recent years are threatening it now.  Although Rusch does not mention it by name she is clearly referring to the Sad Puppies debacle which reached its climax (or nadir, if you prefer) at the World Science Fiction convention in Spokane in 2015.  I happened to attend that event and you can read my interpretation of it here. To oversimplify, there was a group of people who felt that the wrong people were getting awards, and those wrong folks seemed to be mostly women and people of color.

Spade gets a call from the eternally-testy Paladin who demands that he rush to a distant ranch in Texas where some SF writers decided that they know how to run a science fiction convention better than the SMoFs (Secret Masters of Fandom) like Spade.  Their product is Unity Con which they were confident could settle the dispute between differing factions. 

Instead one controversial writer, rumored to be a neo-Nazi, is dead under mysterious circumstances.  Money from the con's account is vanishing.  Can Spade, who despised the writer, solve both crimes before irreparable harm is done to his beloved community?

This is not a fair-play whodunit.  The emphasis is on the characters, whom Rusch makes you care about, and that raises the stakes for the world that they care about as well.

The Cold Hunt, by Ken Brosky

"The Cold Hunt," by Ken Brosky, Mystery Weekly Magazine, August 2018.

I tend to think of didactic mysteries as being limited to novel-length, but they don't have to be.  The term simply means a piece of fiction that attempts to teach something, rather than just entertain.  Think of Dick Francis's novels that usually explore some industry or other field of endeavor: painting, trucking, glassblowing, investment banking...

Brosky's excellent story has an element of that.  He wants to tell you about the life of tigers in Siberia.

Roxy is a young American biologist.  She and her mentor, Dr. Siddig, have been called to investigation what appears to be a killing by a big cat.  The evidence of footprints and corpse show that the tiger had a big meal of the flesh of a local man.  But the evidence does not prove that the man was alive when the tiger arrived.

The villagers are ready to hunt and kill the beast.  Can the scientists prove it is innocent of the killing - if indeed it is?

Sorority House, by Eve Fisher

"Sorority House," by Eve Fisher, in Black Cat Mystery Magazine, #3, 2018.

A nice story by my fellow Sleuthsayer, Eve Fisher, set as many of her stories are, in South Dakota.

The narrator is a woman in her thirties who has moved into an apartment house filled mostly with older people and thinks that's just fine.  Then a wave of new divorcees come in and, alas, they are the "mean girls" from high school.   Lots of requests for favors and "Is your husband out of prison yet?"
  
One of them disappears rather scandalously and then her body is discovered even more so.  The obvious suspect turns out to have an alibi.  Can our hero spot the killer before somebody else gets tagged?

I can't remember the last time an actual whodunit made it onto my best of the week page.  Well done.

Beached, by Ray Daniel

"Beached," by Ray Daniel, in Low Down Dirty Vote, edited by Mysti Berry, Berry Content, 2018.

This is an anthology of crime stories about voter suppression, with the profits going to the ACLU Foundation.  It starts out with this light piece set in Massachusetts.

Our narrator is Thomas Coffee, a private eye who is hired by a rather obnoxious woman to find her father who vanished a few hours earlier.  In fact, a whole segment of the town has disappeared.  On the very day of the traditional New England town meeting.  Hmm...

Here is a bit of the flavor of  the place and the story:

In 1903 the Joppa Town Meeting accepted, by a vote of 128 to 126, a twenty-thousand dollar library grant from Andrew Carnegie.  The close vote showed that the only thing flinty New Englanders trusted less than outsiders was outsiders with money.

They may have a point.  Fun story anyway. 

Uncle Sam, by Leye Adenle

"Uncle Sam," by Leye Adenle, in Lagos Noir, edited by Chris Abani, Akashic Press, 2018.

This is Adenle's second appearance in this column.

Many is the time I have kicked myself for not seeing the ending of a story coming.  This time I should have seen the subject coming.

This is a book of crime stories about Nigeria.  Of course there had to be a story about the 419 scheme.  You may know that better as the Nigerian Prince scam.  "I am the widow of the head of an oil company and I need the help of some honest foreign stranger to illegally smuggle zillions of bucks out of Nigeria..."  419 refers to the section of the Nigerian criminal code which (attempts to) ban such things.

Which brings us to Dougal, newly arrived at the airport in Lagos, and terrified that he may have gotten himself into a you-know-what.  Apparently an uncle he didn't know he had has died, leaving him a ton of money.  He has to come to Lagos in person to collect it.  Someone who claims to represent his uncle's law firm has even provided the money for him to fly there. What could possibly go wrong?

There are bad guys in Lagos, but there are good guys too.  Can Dougal tell them apart?

Made Men, by Timothy O'Leary

"Made Men," by Timothy O'Leary, in  Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2018.

Catterly never pictured himself going out this way; standing in some godforsaken heat sink, clad in the official old man's uniform of big-butt cargo shorts and a Tommy Bahama Hawaiian shirt, guzzling white wine...

Not that Catterly is in imminent danger of checking out.  He's just miserable about having to leave his Montana farm to winter in Arizona.  But his wife Gracie has put up with 45 winters up north and he acknowledges she is due for a change.  Doesn't mean he has to like it.

Things get more, well, interesting, when he catches another old codger cheating at gin. Thomas DeVito does not take it well.  And DeVito, as it turns out, is a retired Mafiosi.  The other retirees say Catterly is now in danger and he has to apologize.  Our hero doesn't see it that way. You might say the threat of death gives him something to live for...

Nicely written and amusing.