Miss Starr's Good-bye, by Leslie Budewitz

"Miss Starr's Good-bye," by Leslie Budewitz, in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November/December 2019.

It was just last month that I wrote in this space about mysteries that feature historical figures.  Naturally enough such tales are usually about well known people: Samuel Johnson, Weegee, Eleanor Roosevelt...

Not so today.  This is (at least) the second story by Leslie Budewitz about Stagecoach Mary, a former slave who moved to Cascade Montana in 1885 to take care of a member of the family she had worked for back east who was now the head of a Catholic school. 

This story is not about a nun; far from it.  (Although one character makes an innocent comparison between the women, causing Mary to have a coughing fit.  Miss Starr is a prostitute, apparently the only one in Cascade.  Her brother has arrived, wanting her to return to civilization.

Her reply: "If you want to take me back to Philadelphia, you might as well kill me first.  Because a life in a gilded cage would be the death of me."

Someone does die and Mary needs the help of a young Indian girl to solve the puzzle.  Most of the story is told from Josie's viewpoint which makes it all the more intriguing, since we understand much of what she does not. 

The Two-Body Problem, by Josh Pachter

"The Two-Body Problem," by Josh Pachter, in Mystery Weekly Magazine, October 2019.

I admit to being a sucker for stories set in higher education.  Comes from three-plus decades in the academe mob.

My friend Josh Pachter has offered a nice example.  The narrator and his  fiance are both marine biologists, hustling toward the completion of their PhDs.  And that is what brings up the titular dilemma.

With the job market the way it is, it's tough enough for one let's say marine biologist to find a tenure-track position at an R1 -- which is, for the uninitiated, a top-level university... When there are two of you in the same competitive field, the challenge is exponentially compounded.

How do two bodies, excuse me, two academics find jobs at the same top school?  And what happens if they don't? 

I very much enjoyed the light and sparkling tone used in this tale to describe the complexities of the higher ed biz.

My only complaint about this story is that Pachter doesn't explain the origin of the "Two Body Problem."  It's a physics issue having to do with objects in orbit.  This adds another level of academic complexity to the whole shebang.

Miss Martin, by Sheila Kohler

"Miss Martin," by Sheila Kohler, in Cutting Edge, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, Akashic Press, 2019.

The publisher sent me a free ARC of this book.

Diane is a teenager and she is making a special trip home from her private boarding school.  It is the first visit since her father married his secretary, Miss Martin.  This followed her mother running off with a lover.  You will not be surprised to know this is a family with problems.

Take a moment to think about stepmothers.  Trophy wives.  Secretaries who marry their bosses.

Got it?  Okay, throw out all those stereotypes because Miss Martin and Diane are going to write a very different tale...  Nice piece of work.

OBF, Inc, by Bernice L. McFadden

"OBF, Inc," by Bernice L. McFadden, in Cutting Edge, edited by Joyce Carol Oates, Akashic Press, 2019.


The publisher sent me an advance reading copy of this book.

I pondered long before choosing this as my best story of the week, simply because it is so far from what most people would call a mystery.  Like most people these days I use Otto Penzler's definition - a story in which crime or the threat of crime is a major element - and there is crime involved here.

Nonetheless, it is not what the average mystery reader would expect.  It is more political fiction, or social commentary.

However, it is a terrific story, and it does have that saving grace of a crime element, so here goes.  It starts like this:

Andrew was entering his third month of unemployment when he sat down at his computer and opened the inbox of his LinkedIn account.  He'd received a response to a query he'd sent off four days after his friend-turned-manager walked him into a conference room swimming with sunlight, smelling of cologne, and the faintest hint of perfume left behind by a group of attorneys who'd recently vacated the space after a five-hour meeting.

Nice detail there.  Andrew is being laid off because the head of his company has been accused of multiple sexual harassment issues, leading the corporate stock to walk off a cliff. 

But good news!  OBF, Inc. wants to talk to him about a possible job.

And here is the rub, of course.  What is OBF exactly and what do they do?  Obviously I can't tell you that.  But it's extremely interesting and thought-provoking.

The story reminds me of Stephen King's great little tale "Quitters, Inc." about an equally unusual  but very different company.

Pentecost, by Eve Fisher

"Pentecost," by Eve Fisher, in Me Too Stories, edited by Elizabeth Zelvin, Level Best Books, 2019.

This is the second appearance on this page by my fellow SleuthSayer, Eve Fisher.  All the stories in this book deal with sexual violence/harrassment against women.

As usual for Fisher, the story is set in rural South Dakota. It is 1990 and the Lutheran Church in Laskin has just acquired its first female pastor. Darla Koenig actually grew up in Laskin but has just moved back, giving her a unique insider/outsider perspective.  She is trying to settle in with her young daughter, finding her place in the delicate social web.

Her daughter loves the dance classes and there lies the rub, because the girls' dressing room shares an interior window with a respected local attorney.  And somehow the paint covering that window keeps getting scraped away...

Darla knows that raising a stink about it will make her enemies she can't afford.  Can she find another way to deal with it?

You bet.

A fun story.

Stumped, by Gary Pettigrew

"Stumped," by  Gary Pettigrew, in Mystery Weekly Magazine, September 2019.

A charming historical mystery this week.  Let's read the first paragraph...

The summer of 1927 was as idyllic as ever remembered in the South of England.  Old John Ayres had decided to retire to spend more time with his family in Dorset and so the council of Lower Dunston was forced to choose a new village policeman; by popular opinion, George Mahoney was the first name suggested.  Fred Hurst nominated himself, of course, but this was quickly discarded because of the obvious reasons that nobody talked about...

And there is the gaff, the hook.  Are we going to find out "the obvious reasons" or is this just a casual element thrown in to suggest that the village knows too much about its residents?

It turns out to be the former. 

The new copper is found dead two days later and Fred Hurst, obvious reasons and all, finds himself a rookie officer struggling with a murder.  He isn't getting a lot of help from the higher-ups who, when he asks for immediate help, respond "basically, that Mr. Mahoney would not be any deader tomorrow."

And he gets no respect from his fellow villagers, who are at least willing to tell him what he's doing wrong. 

Will Fred solve the crime?  And if he does, considering those annoying "reasons," will he even remember the solution?

The Dead Man in the Pearl Gray Hat,by Bruce W. Most

"The Dead Man in the Pearl Gray Hat," by Bruce W. Most, in Mystery Weekly Magazine, August 2019.

Lillian de la Torre was the pioneer, as far as I know. In the 1940s she started writing stories about "Samuel Johnson, detector."  This was the earliest example I am aware of of mystery writers using real people as their protagonists.  Nowadays you can find everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt to Barack Obama starring in crime novels.

In this case the main character is Weegee the Famous, who was indeed a famous photographer, specializing in street scenes of New York City.

Unlike de la Torre's Johnson, Weegee is not shown as a detective here.  His connection to crime is photographing it, and in the era of Murder, Inc., there is plenty of death to document.  In fact, that is the problem he faces in the story.  Jaded reader are getting tired of his photos of countless thugs and gangsters shot to death.  Editors have stopped buying?  What to do?

Weegee finds a solution.  It is perfectly legal, and as near as I can surmise, it doesn't even violate journalistic canons (unlike his habit of rearranging props at the murder scene to make a more interesting shot).  But boy, it does seem unethical in the extreme.

I have no idea whether Most is describing something that actually happened to Weegee or making it up.  But it's an interesting story that makes you think.