The Four-Nine Profile, by Richard Helms

 "The Four-Nine Profile," by Richard Helms, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2024.

 This is the eleventh appearance in this blog by Richard Helms.

Write what you know; so the experts tell us.  Helms is following that advice here. He used to be a forensic psychologist, like his protagonist.

Helms makes an interesting choice for opening the story: Nathan Lake is interviewing a man who has pled guilty to sexual assault but denies he has done it. This turns out to be unrelated to the main plot, but we learn a lot about Lake's character, job and methods.  And the story does circle back to one part of that interview.

But after we see Lake in his milieu he is rudely forced out of it.  A serial rapist has turned to murder and the police chief wants him to analyze the unknown assailant before he strikes again.  Lake protests that he has no training as a profiler, could even lose his license for trying, but he is left with no choice.  Adding to the pressure, he is forced to work with a cop he doesn't trust.

A nice and suspenseful procedural.

Shooting Stars, by Richard Helms

"Shooting Stars," by Richard Helms, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, September/October 2015.

Mr. Helms makes his third appearance on this page, with his second story in this series.  (Here is the first.)

Boy Boatright is a down-on-his-luck police detective, as you can tell from this opening sentence:

Even after the crime-scene guys finished wrecking it, Nigel Bowles's trailer looked nicer than my apartment.

Lovely.  Bowles is, or was, the favorite judge on a top TV talent show, visiting town to film a special episode.  Everyone involved in the series had multiple reasons to want him dead, and most had opportunities.


But that isn't Boatright's real problem.  That would be the fact that one of the other judges is a client of an alleged psychic with the amazing name of Bowie Crapster, and he is the reason Boyright keeps threatening to retire.  Forced, again to work with the Crapster - No more than five and a half feet tall, built like the Pillsbury Doughboy, resplendent in an Italian ice-cream suit with silk cravat and gleaming white patent-leather shoes. His hair, cut in a sort of Caesar style with short bleached bangs, was reflected in his silver Elvis sunglasses.  He looked like a Good Humor Man in Key West. - our hero threatens to resign , but that would spoil the fun.

Crapster isn't quite as charmingly annoying this time, largely because he explains to Boatright and us how he achieves some of his allegedly mystical effects.  A nice example of working your way through the suspects.

One complaint:  Helms is stuck with the names he chose for his heroes but with so many letters in the alphabet why does this story include: Boy Boatwright, Bowie, Belinda, Billy, Baggs, and Bliss?  Why make it harder for the reader to keep the characters straight?

Spear Carriers, by Richard Helms

 "Spear Carriers," by Richard Helms, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, November/December 2023.

As far as I can tell, this is only the second time an author has appeared in my best-of column twice in the same month.  Even more impressive (to me, at any rate), this is Helms' tenth story to make it here, which puts him in a tie for first place with Mark Thielman, Joseph S. Walker, and Terence Faherty.  

Dave and Sam have bit parts in a Broadway play, as policemen.  They only show up at the very end which leaves them with a lot of time on their hands.  One night Dave goes out for a bite and the clerk gives him his food for free. "Thank you for your service."

This happens because Dave is wearing his costume - which is to say, something that looks very much like a police uniform.

Hmm...

Dave reports this to Sam who is the imaginative type.  I'll bet you can think of some of the plans he comes up with.  And being brighter than Sam you can probably foresee some of the things that could go wrong.

But not all of the ones Helms dreams up. 

Clever plot and very funny writing.  

"If we're caught, we'll be fired!" I yelled.

"We're actors!" Sam yelled back.  "Getting fired is part of the deal!"

Noble Rot, by Richard Helms

"Noble Rot," by Richard Helms, in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, May/June 2020.

This is the fifth appearance in this slot by Richard Helms, and the third in for this series.

I recently wrote about the ambiguity of some subgenres.  It occurs to me  that I would not like to be on the Shamus Awards committee that has to decide whether this is a private eye story.

The narrator is definitely not a P.I. Boy Boatwright is a cop.  But he is really playing a reluctant Watson to Bowie Crapster.  The Crapster (wonderful name) is not a P.I. either.  He makes his living as a psychic and part of his shtick is using his alleged  magical powers to solve crimes. Does that qualify?  Beats me.

Boy and Bowie don't get along too well.  Witness this piece of phone conversation.

"There's been a murder."
"Please tell me you're the victim."

Ha ha.  Actually a woman has been slain at a winery during a fundraising party full of the rich and influential.  And since Crapster is a friend of the wealthy host/winemaker Boy has to tread lightly.

Helms is juggling a lot of balls in this story.  He has to tell a coherent story, provide clues, and allow Boy to figure out a non-psychic explanation for Crapster's apparently mystical solution. It's a lot of fun.

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.

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.

Second Sight Unseen, by Richard Helms

"Second Sight Unseen," by Richard, Helms, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 2014.

Helms offers us what is intended to be the first in a series of stories.  The concept here isn't new (hey, Sherlock Holmes wasn't the first genius detective either) but the characters are intersting and the writing is amusing. 

The narrator is Boy Boatwright, a cop who should have retired but is living on booze and adrenalin.  (When the story starts he is waking up with his face on the toilet rim.)  But the hero, for lack of a better word, is the remarkably-named Bowie Crapster.  Crapster is "five and a half feet tall, with a figure like a Bradford pear."  He dresses in flashy clothes and "looked like the vanguard of a midget Elvis parade."

Crapster claims to be a psychic detective but he graciously gives the cops all the credit for his work.  He just wants the reward money.  Boatwright loathes him, but the fact is, he is a pretty shrewd sleuth.  In this case he deals with the apparent kidnapping of the young heir to a wealthy family. 

Will he solve it?  Will he drive Boatwright back to the booze?  "Some days it just doesn't pay to get up out of the toilet."

Busting Red Heads, by Richard Helms

"Busting Red Heads," by Richard Helms, in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine,  March/April

2014.

I have said before that my favorite stories tend to have at least one of three qualities: a great concept, heightened language, or a surprise ending.  Helms' story scores on the first two and makes a shot at the third.

Here's the concept: Tommy Crane fought in World War I, joined the Boston Police, and then figured he could make more money by joining a detective agency.  But like a lot of "detectives" in the twenties his job wasn't to solve crimes; it was to stop Bolsheviks, being defined as anyone who wanted to form or join a union.  This is a part of the private dick business I don't remember anyone writing about before.

 By heightened language I mean that the words are there for something more than just telling the story.  In this case, they tell you a lot about character:

Three of us -- me, Everett Sloop, and Warren Johns -- were sitting in the Kansas City office in August of 1923, trying to stay cool and counting the minutes until we could shove off and grab a cool beer down the street.  Jess Coulter, our commander, walked in and scowled when he saw us.
"You guys packed?"
"We goin' somewhere?" Johns asked. 
"Rawlings, Kentucky."
"Don't much care for Kentucky," Sloop said.
"There's the door," Coulter said.  "Nobody's holding you here."
That shut Sloop up but good.

In Kentucky they get to work beating up strikers but things go wrong when they  attack the union office.  The wrong people die and there's a mystery to solve.   Good story.

West of the Ashley, by Richard Helms

 

"West  of the Ashley," by Richard Helms, in Prohibition Peepers: Private Eyes During the Noble Experiment, edited by Michael Bracken, Down and Out Books 2023.

This is the ninth appearance in my column by Richard Helms. A perusal of those tales shows that he is one of my favorite current authors of private eye stories. One reason for that is that he finds unusual things for his P.I.s to do.

Take, for instance, Cletus Nobile, a World War I veteran, now doing the gumshoe gig in Charleston. His current assignment? Figure out who is selling unauthorized booze in the segregated section of town. "You can sell all you want west of the Ashley River.  Nobody cares what you do out there.  Try to sell your hooch south of the Citadel and between the rivers, you'll dance with the devil, and he always leads."

Good writing, good plot.

See Humble and Die, by RIchard Helms

"See Humble and Die," by Richard Helms, in The Eyes of Texas, edited by Michael Bracken, Down and Out Books, 2019.

Helms is making his fourth appearance on this page, with a pretty straight-forward private eye story.

Huck Spence retired after thirty-some years in the Texas Rangers, got bored, and applied for a PI license.  Most of his work turned out to be serving subpoenas.  Usually not a very challenging gig.

One day he goes to Humble, not far from Houston,  to serve a guy named Ralph Oakley who skipped out on jury duty on the very day that "the district judge's diverticulitis was flaring up.  Judge was in the mood to knock broomsticks up some asses."

Our hero tracks luckless Ralph down and then somebody gets murdered and Huck's Ranger instincts take over.  He wants to know whodunit and whether he was partly responsible.

A neatly plotted little tale.

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.