"The Courier" by Dan Fesperman

In Agents of Treachery, ed. Otto Penzler, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard, 2010.

In 1958, former B-17 gunner and spy Bill Tobin is working at the Federal Records Center, tasked with deciding which documents from World War II get burned, declassified, or locked away, when he comes across the file on Lieutenant Seymour Parker. Shot down during his first mission, Parker was captured by the Swiss and recruited by Tobin because he seemed the sort who would crack if interrogated by the Germans. Allen Dulles and the OSS intended to use Parker to pass bad intelligence to the Germans about U.S. troop movements.

I was drawn into the story as Tobin read the file and recalled his own recruitment by Dulles, and his part in setting Parker up as bait for the Germans. I learned along with Tobin what became of Parker after he was handed over to the Germans in a prisoner exchange fourteen years earlier. Fesperman makes good use of the file to frame this story, and of Tobin's current position to bring about some closure.

NBS Special Report: 2014 SMFS Derringer Finalists

The Short Mystery Fiction Society has announced the finalists for its 2014 Derringer Awards as determined by SMFS member volunteer judges:

For Best Flash (Up to 1,000 words)

• "Final Statement" by Robert Bailey (The Flash Fiction Offensive, July 18, 2013)
• "Not My Day" by Stephen Buehler (Last Exit to Murder, Down & Out Books, June 2013)
• "The Needle and the Spoon" by Allan Leverone (Shotgun Honey, November 15, 2013)
• "Luck is What You Make" by Stephen D. Rogers (Crime Factory, May 2013)
• "Terry Tenderloin and the Pig Thief" by John Weagly (Shotgun Honey, June 21, 2013)

For Best Short Story (1,001–4,000 words)

• "Pretty Little Things" by Chris F. Holm (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 2013)
• "The Present" by Robert Lopresti (The Strand Magazine, February-May 2013)
• "The Sweetheart Scamster" by Rosemary McCracken (Thirteen by the Mesdames of Mayhem, August 2013)
• "The Little Outlaw" by Mike Miner (Plan B Magazine, August 9, 2013)
• "The Cemetery Man" by Bill Pronzini (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 2013)

For Best Long Story (4,001–8,000 words)

• "Myrna!" by John Bubar (Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold, Level Best Books, September 2013)
• "Bloody Signorina" by Joseph D'Agnese (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September 2013)
• "Give Me a Dollar" by Ray Daniel (Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold, Level Best Books, September 2013)
• "Dance Man" by Andrew Jetarski (Last Exit to Murder, Down & Out Books, June 2013)
• "A Dangerous Life" by Adam Purple (Best New England Crime Stories 2014: Stone Cold, Level Best Books, September 2013)

For Best Novelette (8,001–20,000 words)

• "The Serpent Beneath the Flower" by Jack Bates (Mind Wings Audio, April 2013)
• "The Goddaughter's Revenge" by Melodie Campbell (Orca Rapid Reads, October 2013)
• "For Love's Sake" by O'Neil De Noux (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, July/August 2013)
• "The Antiquary's Wife" by William Burton McCormick (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March 2013)
• "Last Night in Cannes" by James L. Ross (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, November 2013)

Finalists may obtain certificates of achievement by emailing SMFS Vice President Gerald So (G_SO at YAHOO dot COM).

SMFS members in good standing since December 31, 2013 vote to determine the winner in each category March 1–30, 2014. The winners will be announced Monday, March 31, 2014.

"Class Reunion" by Robb White

This week's story at BEAT to a PULP is told from the viewpoint of "Pig" Piglowski attending his twenty-year high school reunion in East Palestine, Ohio. White sets a dark tone from the second paragraph as Pig remembers his best friend from high school, Joey Soliday. The poorest of the poor in East Palestine, Joey's father was blinded in a glass factory explosion. His sister's life mysteriously went off the rails until she died of an apparent overdose.

"Class Reunion" stands out to me because Pig doesn't drive the action. He remembers unreliably or hears information secondhand months or years later. While it made me feel helpless, this conceit also kept me intrigued and in suspense.

Having first read Robb White's work years ago, submitted under the name Terry White to Thrilling Detective, I'm happy to be reunited.

NBS Special Report: 2014 MWA Edgar Awards

Mystery Writers of America today announced the nominees for the 2014 Edgar Allan Poe Award nominees, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television, published or produced in 2013. Here are the nominees for Best Short Story:

• "The Terminal" – Kwik Krimes by Reed Farrel Coleman (Amazon Publishing – Thomas & Mercer)
• "So Long, Chief" – Strand Magazine by Max Allan Collins & Mickey Spillane (The Strand)
• "The Caxton Lending Library & Book Depository” – Bibliomysteries by John Connolly (Mysterious)
• "There are Roads in the Water" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Tina Corey (Dell Magazines)
• "Where That Morning Sun Goes Down" – Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Tim L. Williams (Dell Magazines)

and the winner of the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for Best First Short Story by an American Author:

• "The Wentworth Letter" – Criminal Element's Malfeasance Occasional by Jeff Soloway (St. Martin's Press)

Congratulations and good luck to all. Awards will be presented to the winners at the 68th Edgar® Awards Banquet on May 1, 2014.

NBS Special Report: 2013 PWA Shamus Awards

This past week, the Private Eye Writers of America released its list of finalists for the 2013 Shamus Awards. Below are the Best P.I. Short Story nominees:

"The Sequel" by Jeffrey Deaver in The Strand
"After Cana" by Terence Faherty in EQMM
"O'Nelligan and the Lost Fates" by Michael Nethercott in AHMM
"Illegitimati Non Carborundum" by Stephen D. Rogers in Crimespree
"Ghost Negligence" by John Shepphird in AHMM

NBS Special Report: 2013 SMFS Derringer Winners

As announced March 31, 2013. Winners in bold

BEST FLASH STORY (Up to 1,000 words):

• "An Old-Fashioned Villain" by Nick Andreychuk (Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, May 2012)
• "The Cable Job" by Randy DeWitt (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September 2012)
• "Dead Man" by A.J. Hayes (Off The Record 2: At The Movies, September 2012)
• "Daddy's Girl" by Nicola Kennington (The Flash Fiction Offensive, July 22, 2012)
• "Twas the Knife Before Christmas" by Allan Leverone (Shotgun Honey, December 24, 2012)

BEST SHORT STORY (1,001 - 4,000 words):

• "Getting Out of the Box" by Michael Bracken (Crime Square, Vantage Point, 2012)
• "A Special Kind of Hell" by Hilary Davidson (BEAT to a PULP: Round Two, May 2012)
• "Dead Weight" by Allan Leverone (Burning Bridges: A Renegade Fiction Anthology, April 2012)
• "Nain Rouge" by Barbara Nadel (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August 2012)
• "Baby Boy" by Todd Robinson (Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT, September 2012)

BEST LONG STORY (4,001 - 8,000 words):

• "The Pot Hunters" by David Hagerty (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 2012)
• "A Regular Story" by Peggy McFarland (Best New England Crime Stories 2013: Blood Moon, Level Best Books, November 2012)
• "Peaches" by Todd Robinson (Grift #1, April 2012)
• "When Duty Calls" by Art Taylor (Chesapeake Crimes: This Job Is Murder, 2012)
• "Double Wedding" Mo Walsh (Best New England Crime Stories 2013: Blood Moon, Level Best Books, November 2012)

BEST NOVELETTE (8,001 - 20,000 words):

• "Wood-Smoke Boys" by Doug Allyn (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2012)
• "Iphigenia in Aulis" by Mike Carey (An Apple for the Creature, September 2012)
• "Mariel" by David Dean (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 2012)
• "Pirate Dave and the Captain's Ghost" by Toni L.P. Kelner (An Apple for the Creature, September 2012)
• "The Sunny South" by Chris Muessig (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2012)

EDWARD D. HOCH MEMORIAL GOLDEN DERRINGER FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

• Loren D. Estleman

NBS Special Report: 2013 Derringer Finalists

As determined by volunteer judges from the Short Mystery Fiction Society and announced by SMFS Awards Coordinator Anthony Rudzki:

BEST FLASH STORY (Up to 1,000 words):

• "An Old-Fashioned Villain" by Nick Andreychuk (Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine, May 2012)
• "The Cable Job" by Randy DeWitt (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, September 2012)
• "Dead Man" by A.J. Hayes (Off The Record 2: At The Movies, September 2012)
• "Daddy's Girl" by Nicola Kennington (The Flash Fiction Offensive, July 22, 2012)
• "Twas the Knife Before Christmas" by Allan Leverone (Shotgun Honey, December 24, 2012)

BEST SHORT STORY (1,001 - 4,000 words):

• "Getting Out of the Box" by Michael Bracken (Crime Square, Vantage Point, 2012)
• "A Special Kind of Hell" by Hilary Davidson (BEAT to a PULP: Round Two, May 2012)
• "Dead Weight" by Allan Leverone (Burning Bridges: A Renegade Fiction Anthology, April 2012)
• "Nain Rouge" by Barbara Nadel (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August 2012)
• "Baby Boy" by Todd Robinson (Protectors: Stories to Benefit PROTECT, September 2012)

BEST LONG STORY (4,001 - 8,000 words):

• "The Pot Hunters" by David Hagerty (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 2012)
• "A Regular Story" by Peggy McFarland (Best New England Crime Stories 2013: Blood Moon, Level Best Books, November 2012)
• "Peaches" by Todd Robinson (Grift #1, April 2012)
• "When Duty Calls" by Art Taylor (Chesapeake Crimes: This Job Is Murder, 2012)
• "Double Wedding" Mo Walsh (Best New England Crime Stories 2013: Blood Moon, Level Best Books, November 2012)

BEST NOVELETTE (8,001 - 20,000 words):

• "Wood-Smoke Boys" by Doug Allyn (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2012)
• "Iphigenia in Aulis" by Mike Carey (An Apple for the Creature, September 2012)
• "Mariel" by David Dean (Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, December 2012)
• "Pirate Dave and the Captain's Ghost" by Toni L.P. Kelner (An Apple for the Creature, September 2012)
• "The Sunny South" by Chris Muessig (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2012)

The 2013 Derringer winners will be determined by a March 1–30 poll of eligible SMFS members and will be announced March 31.

"Knife Fight" by Joel Goldman

Originally published in the Mystery Writers of America anthology The Prosecution Rests and now available for Amazon Kindle, "Knife Fight" is engagingly told by defendant Travis Runnels, a previously convicted drug dealer, now on trial for the fatal stabbing of Diego Hernandez.

The story unfolds as Travis meets with public defender Alex Stone and follows her performance in court. When the case turns against Travis, he accuses Alex of using what he's told her in confidence to pursue her own agenda.

Former trial lawyer Goldman so enjoyed writing Alex Stone, he expanded her into a novel series, the first of which, Stone Cold, is due out next month.

"The Big O" by Vicki Hendricks

From: A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir ed. Megan Abbott, Busted Flush Press, 2007

If you're a fan of Hendricks's sexy noir novels as I am, the title of this story may fool you, too. "The Big O" refers to Florida's Lake Okeechobee, where protagonist Candy flees, trying to provide a better life than her year-old son, Chance, would've had with his abusive father.

True to noir, Candy lands in another abusive relationship with trailer park owner Jimmy. As a a hurricane bears down, Candy hatches a plot to kill Jimmy and steal his stash of drug money. Just right for a hot summer afternoon.

His Daughter's Island by Brendan DuBois

The current Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (July 2012) has this nifty story by past master Brendan DuBois. DuBois has taken home Barry and Shamus awards and been nominated several times for Edgar awards, so the story was never going to be a bad one, but this one was more than competent; it was touching.

Zach Ford is a father whose daugther died on a private island in the middle of a giant lake. She was invited to a party by the son of the richest man in town and who could resist the lure of the swankiest address in the state? Some alcohol, a pill slipped to her, and then she's no more. That's it. An accident, the coroner will say, and the father of the rich boy slips his son out of the country. What can her father do? How can he even begin to seek Justice for his daughter if the law refuses to be on his side? And how can he get closure without Justice?

Want to know how he goes about things? Get a copy of the story.

Shanks Commences by Robert Lopresti

(Cough. Cough. Clear away the cobwebs...)
It's been a while, but here's a review. A fine story by one of my favorite storytellers, Robert Lopresti - "Shanks Commences." If you don't know Shanks is Lopresti's series character - a mystery writer who solves mysteries he comes across/stumbles over. In this case, the stumbling happens on a college campus. Shanks is there to receive and honorary degree, give a commencement address, and, most importantly, donate some of his books to the school's library. The librarian had been a professor - gave Shanks a D in English and looks down his nose at the man now regardless of Shanks' success as an author. Lots of people might want him dead. And dead is how he's ultimately found.

Is Shanks a suspect? Well, he has to be at first, but don't worry. He's more into helping to uncover the real killer. And with a witty repartee with his wife, and some smart alecky remarks to the official detective in charge of the investigation, this is exactly what he does. In any event, this is a humorous story in the current Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine.

Note also that Lopresti is a college librarian himself...

"Remaindered" by Lee Goldberg

From: Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, August 2001.

Thriller writer Kevin Dangler—whose second and third books sank under the weight of bad reviews—meets Megan, an alluring librarian whose attention entices him into a night of passion.

When Megan proves eager to spread the news of her night with the married Kevin, he snaps and inadvertently beats her to death. Luckily finding a book on forensics among Megan's shelves, Kevin meticulously cleans up the evidence of his crime, but one detail does him in.

"Remaindered" shows off Goldberg's experience in publishing, his wry sense of humor, and the attention to detail that serves him well as author of the Monk tie-in novels. The story is available as a free Kindle download this week only. The ebook includes a link and password to watch a 20-minute short film based on "Remaindered", directed by Goldberg.

Nasty. Brutish. Short. Mobile.

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"Chin Yong-Yun Takes a Case" by S.J. Rozan

Currently a free download at Smashwords, this story features the mother of Rozan's series P.I., Lydia Chin. A new, not-yet trusted member of Yong-Yun's mah-jongg circle shows up at her door with her computer programmer son, looking to hire Lydia. The son, visiting New York from Beijing, explains that his infant son has been kidnapped and there are two hours left on a deadline to hand over secret software code in exchange for his life.

Due to the ticking clock, Yong-Yun accepts the case, claiming to work more closely with Lydia than she actually does. The tone of the story is light, yet I worried that Yong-Yun might be in over her head. Lydia does call in at one point, but Yong-Yun deflects her offer of help.

I saw through the kidnapping plot a little before the end, but the real fun of this story is hearing Yong-Yun's voice and seeing how she puts things together.

"Dolls", by Victor Gischler

From: Three On A Light, 2010.

Dean Murphy used to lead an interesting life. One day at a flea market he'd picked up a Zippo lighter, and ever since then, his one-man detective agency had seen enough vampires, werewolves, and other assorted ghouls to fill a dozen Twilight books.

But now the curse haunting the Zippo has been exorcised, and his life is back to normal, or, more accurately, boring.

Finally, though, he gets off his butt and takes a new case, an odd young woman named Felicia. Felicia just dumped her boyfriend, and when he left, he took something that belonged to her: a red backpack. Felicia wants it back. She wants it back badly.

Back in the swing of things at last, it only takes Dean a few hours to track down the backpack. Unfortunately he finds her boyfried, Sebastian, as well, and he's not jolly or green but he is a giant. Things come to a happy conclusion, for all except the giant, and Felicia pays Dean and sends him on his way.

Before she does, though, he sees what's in her backpack, a book, very old and valuable. Some of the occult symbols on it are disturbingly familiar. Soon enough he realized that this isn't over, not at all.

"Dollls" is the last, longest, and best story in Three On A Light. I'd read several of Gischler's Dean Murphy stories before, but not this one, and it really breaks free of the conventions of the private eye story in a way the others don't. The other stories hew more to private eye conventions, and "Dolls" starts that way, too, before Gischler takes the story into uncharted territory, discarding many PI trappings along the way. By the end you're really wondering if any of the good guys are going to make it.

I'm not saying; you'll have to read it to find out.

"The Unholy Three", by William Campbell Gault

From: Joe Puma, P.I., Wonder Publishing Group, 2010.

Johnny Delevan is a 12-year-old kid with a problem. This isn't a problem he can talk to his parents about (they're dead), or a teacher, or a priest. Instead he takes this problem to the neighborhood private investigator, Joe Puma.

The problem: he doesn't like his sister's boyfriend.

His sister Eilenn is twenty-three, and the head of the household now, and she's started seeing a slick, handsome character named Jean Magnus. Despite the fact that Puma is on his uppers once again and can't afford to turn down paying clients (Johnny has a paper route), he gently suggests that maybe the kid is a little jealous. Johnny, cheesed off, tells him what's what and storms out.

And that doesn't sit right with Puma. He kept turning it over in his mind, looking at the angles, and finally he decides it won't hurt if he asks a few questions. So he does. In particular, he looks up an old acquaintance, Lenny Donovan, now the house detective at Magnus' hotel.

The next morning, Donovan has disappeared.

William Campbell Gault was one of the leading private eye writers of the 1950s before he began writing sports stories for the juvenile market, which was more lucrative. The stories in Joe Puma, P.I. all date from that decade, and they're excellent. If you like this kind of thing you'll love this book. If not, it might change your mind.

"Eight Mile and Dequindre", by Loren Estleman

From: Amos Walker: The Complete Story Collection, Tyrus Books, 2010.

Private eye Amos Walker drove out to a little diner on Dequindre where it me Eight Mile Road just to be stood up by a prospective client. He was still there, nursing his coffee and thinking about a career change, when a young guy who looked a bit like Howdy Doody came in, beaming and flashing a picture of the girl he's there to meet.

Walker was just leaving when the two thugs barged in and shot Howdy Doody dead.

So naturally he's obliged to stick around a while longer, until the homicide detectives are all done with him. Much later he's finally crawling into his Chevy for the drive home when something catches his eye - a woman, naturally. The woman from the dead man's picture.

The set-up has obvious similarities to Raymond Chandler's "Red Wind", and it's the first time I noticed a well-known author giving a hat tip to his influences. The rest of the story plays out in the traditional way - nice guy mixed up with the wrong crowd wants out - and is pretty typical of early Walker.

"The Avenging Chance", by Anthony Berkeley

From: The Oxford Book of English Detective Stories, ed. Patricia Craig. Oxford Univeristy Press, 1990.

Sir William Anstruther went to his London club for lunch, as he did every day, at half past ten. Waiting for him in the mail was a small box of chocolates, along with a letter stating the this was a new product designed to appeal to men, and asking for his opinion. Sir William was rather a man's man and was quite prepared to bin the lot when another member, Graham Beresford, happened by. In the end the chocolates went home with Beresford, to the delight of both men.

Once at home, Beresford had a few of the chocolates before leaving to attend to some business. Upon arriving back at his club several hours later he was taken gravely ill.

His wife had a few of the chocolates, and then a few more, and by evening she was dead.

All this was brought before Roger Sheringham, occasional consultant to Scotland Yard. He could make no more of it than the police. To the essential question, Who would want Sir William dead?, there seemed no good answer. Although the investigation went on, the general feeling was that this was the act of a lunatic, someone unlikely to ever be uncovered.

Until Roger had a chance meeting with a very silly woman on a busy London street. This woman, an acquiantance of his and of the unlucky Mrs. Beresford, mentioned a small fact in passing, the significance of which she did not recognize, though Roger saw it at once. And through tugging on that tiny scrap of string, he unraveled the entire mystery.

One of the greatest short stories of the Golden Age of detection (think Christie, Sayers, et al), "The Avenging Chance" has been reprinted many times, and appears in many anthologies of the best such stories. It strikes an excellent balance between dismay as such a callous crime, and a certain intellectual airiness in treating it largely as a puzzle. To a modern reader it's not as old-fashioned and windy as many of its ilk, and is certainly a landmark of mid-twentieth century crime fiction.

"Cry Silence", by Fredric Brown

From: The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories, ed. Otto Penzler. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, 2010.

This new anthology of classic stories from Black Mask magazine opens with a long, long-winded story by Erle Stanley Gardner, which, at penny-a-word rates, seemed designed mostly to deposit as many pennies as possible in Gardner's pockets.

The next story, though, is "Cry Silence" by Fredric Brown. It's short, only a couple of thousand words, and it carries an impact that the weight of Gardner's saga can't match.

The nameless narrator, a stranger in town, is sitting at the train station waiting for a connection when he overhears the old "if a tree falls in the forest" argument. Despite his best intentions he's drawn into conversation by the station agent, and soon learns why the man is so intent on the line between sound and silence.

There's another man at the station there, who sits impassively throughout. He claims to be deaf, says the agent, and if he's telling the truth, he's the victim of a terrible tragedy. And if he's not, he's a cold-blooded killer.

The twist ending to this short little shocker is worth the price of admission. Brown was one of the most original thinkers among the Black Mask writers, and this story truly deserves its place among the best stories published there.

"The Gun Also Rises" by Jeffrey Cohen

From: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, January/February 2011

In 1999, trying to find out who gave his six-year-old son Ethan a water gun (with which he squirted a classmate) causing him to face a two-day suspension, suburban New Jersey husband, father, and freelance reporter Aaron Tucker gets a call to cover the death of Ramon Escobar, closer for the minor league Edison Kilowatts.

Escobar apparently died when his teammates piled on top of him celebrating a win. However, Tucker's various sources say it's unlikely the weight simply crushed him. Tucker overhears two of Escobar's Latino teammates talking, but their only words in English are "cream" and "clear".

By setting his story ten years in the past, Cohen cleverly draws attention to three of today's hottest topics. In 1999, pro baseball hardly acknowledged the problem of performance-enhancing drugs, team celebrations were thought harmless fun, and Ethan's disability had yet to be diagnosed as Asperger's syndrome. Tucker's editor at the fanboy magazine Infield isn't interested in the hard news story of a drug-related death. He wants a puff piece lamenting the loss of a talent so young.

Lucky for readers, Tucker keeps digging, and with the help of his multilingual best friend, gets to the bottom of Escobar's death. I enjoyed this story's humor and heart, but also Tucker's level-headed approach to questioning people. Realizing what will set them off, he tries to disarm them and get the answers he needs.

"Neighbors" by Joseph Finder

From: Agents of Treachery ed. Otto Penzler. Vintage Crime, 2010.

Finder's contribution to an anthology of original espionage stories follows protagonist Matt Parker's suspicions of his new neighbor Jimmy Nourwood. The suspicions seem to start on the level of mild prejudice: "He looks Arab. 'Nourwood'? That can't be his real name." When Matt's computer searches on Nourwood come up empty, you have to wonder what's going on.

As far as he goes to learn about Jimmy, Matt is very guarded about his own life. As I read the story, I measured my own view of Jimmy against Matt's increasing paranoia and aggressive actions. Eventually I found Matt so distasteful I turned away from him—and was blindsided by everything he was hiding.

Whether you gravitate toward Matt or Jimmy, I'm betting you'll be surprised, too.

Passed by Kieran Shea

Stories by Kieran Shea are bound to be well written and hard edged, so he's fast becoming one of those writers that can get me to spring for a copy of a magazine or open up one of the e-zines. His story "Passed" is in the current iteration of Plots with Guns, and it is well worth the read.

In it, a son gets a call from his death-row dwelling father in the hour before the needle. The son, a full grown man now, only has bad memories and no real desire to talk with his daddy, but then the request the father makes is a simple favor and, well, it is in his very last hour: pick up and deliver some funeral clothes.

The story has a lot of atmosphere and even though I kind of wished for a sligthly different ending, that might just be "Moral-me" talking. Anyway, check it out.

Mr. Alibi by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Kathryn Rusch is not known to me personally, but I've admired her career for a while. She writes romance, sci-fi and mystery at an award winning caliber, and her list of credits is amazing. Take a look.

The current issue of EQMM has one of her stories, and I think it is the best PI story I've read in a while. It's called Mr. Alibi and concerns a female PI who is in a bar waiting for a no-show client when she's approached by a man who wants her to alibi him for the night before when he claims to have murdered his wife. At first she thinks he's just using a pick-up line or trying to be funny, but doubts creep in and what follows is a mix of false identities, scams, and Hollywood history.

It's an engrossing story and the legwork the PI goes through felt real. Overall, a great read.

The Uninvited Guest by Jane Hammons

This story, in my latest issue of Crimespree Magazine is lovely. Okay, it is a really very dark brand of lovely, but it's memorable lovely as well. The prose is neat, the psychology of the characters seems real, the plot presented twists that I wasn't expecting (granted, that's not that hard)In any event, the story deals with a pair of con artists - older male, quite dominant - and a younger female, submissive but also the narrator. They come across a young girl - 8 year old Connie - and the female grifter decides to use the girl in a series of scams which has an unintended result.

Anyway, you won't be disappointed by this one. It is supposedly a cut from a novel Ms. Hammons is working on and if this is the stuff that got cut, I can't wait to read the actual novel.

"One, Two, Three" by Paul Cain

From: The Black Lizard Big Book of the Pulps, ed. Otto Penzler. Vintage Crime / Black Lizard, 2007.

The unnamed gambler who narrates this story is after a con man named Healey, and with good reason. Healey plays cards but is no good at it, and he has a lot of money. The narrator plays well and wants to relieve him of some.

After cooling his heels in Los Angeles waiting for his mark to show up, the narrator gets a tip he's hiding out in Caliente, Nevada, and he wastes no time getting up there. Pretty soon he and Healey are drinking together, and Healey eventually asks him for a lift to L.A. Unfortunately Healey gets cold feet, as in laid-out-on-a-slab cold, and his money takes a trip of its own. The narrator doesn't like that so much.

He returns to L.A. and starts hunting around, and before long he discovers two other chislers trying to horn in on the action. The three of them do their best to beat each other to the punch, but unbeknownst to them, there's someone else out there ready to knock them all on the head.

"One, Two, Three" is told in Cain's trademark deadpan style, but unlike many of his other stories, there's nothing grim about it. In fact it's blackly humorous and the ending is outright funny. I read Cain's collection Seven Slayers, in which this story apparently appeared, several years ago, but for whatever reason had absolutely no memory of it, even after rereading it in Otto Penzler's mammoth love letter to the pulps.

I was reminded of Cain today when I read the news that one of Cain's stories that had never been reprinted was available. Take a look here for more details. (via Spinetingler)

NBS Special Report: Plainclothes - A Tribute Site to the Original Crimestopper

Recently assembled by Max Allan Collins, Bruce Dettman, Jim Doherty, Tracy Kazaleh, Kim McFarland, Shelley Pleger, Joe Staton, and Mike Curtis, Plainclothes pays tribute to Chester Gould's iconic police detective, Dick Tracy. The site—featuring web comics, serialized fiction, and feature articles—will be up for a limited time. Check it out while you can.

King by Dave Zeltserman

This is the current story at Beat to a Pulp. I'm not sure if it is truly a crime story (though there is a crime in it) but it is a nice piece of dark psychology. In it, Mary an elderly lady who may not have every one of her marbles readily at hand, likes to feed pigeons*. She has a nemesis who demands that she stop the practice. He scares her and with good reason. He's very mean. And he's willing to break the law to make sure he gets his way.

What makes the story is how Mary reacts to the man she knows as "The Evil Wizard." Can't say anything about that since I'd like you to go take a look at the story for yourself.

There is a fairytale element to the story (king, wizard, princess) that I could wish had been more fully developed. But that would have taken more pages and one of the downfalls of online publishing, I think, is that it's hard to get readers to read longer work on the screen. Ah well. Still a very worthy story.

"Julius Katz", by Dave Zeltserman

Available for download from Amazon.com.

Julius Katz is not Nero Wolfe.

Sure, there are similarities. The name, to begin with. The love of fine food. The indolence that means he only works when he has to. And an assistant named Archie, the narrator of the story, who women find utterly charming.

But Katz does not weigh an eighth of a ton; in fact, he keeps himself in excellent shape. He's witty, charming, and irresistible to women. He drinks wine, not beer. He lives in a Boston townhouse, not a New York brownstone, and he ventures out of it frequently. And Archie? He's an artificial intelligence housed in Katz's tie clip.

Likewise, "Julius Katz" is not a Nero Wolfe story, though it obviously draws inspiration from Wolfe, and shares some of the same rhythms. Katz is obliged to take a case from Norma Brewer, a woman in late middle age, and her sister Helen. Their mother is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, and their brother Lawrence - her legal guardian - refuses to move her to a nursing home. Norma is afraid that through Lawrence's negligence some harm will come to her mother, especially since Lawrence himself stands to inherit a tidy sum.

So Katz visits their mother, and spends the next few days assiduously avoiding work, despite Archie's protestations. Then they get word of a new development: murder.

"Julius Katz" suffers somewhat from being an "origin" story. We spend almost as much time getting to know Katz as he does investigating the case. And the pacing can best be described as... langourous? Sedate? Fans of Nero Wolfe (as I am) will get the most enjoyment from this story, but anyone who enjoys an old-fashioned tale of pure detection will get their money's worth.

The Alphabet Workbook by Mehnaz Turner

The Alphabet Workbook by Mehnaz Turner is only three pages long, but it packs a wallop. It appears in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine's Department of First Stories, but is so amazingly well written and so ultimately devastating that you'd be forgiven for thinking Ms. Turner is an old hand at the mystery story. I'd forgive you.

The story is only three pages long, so there is a sense in which I can't say all that much without revealing more of the plot than is decent. On the other hand, the power of this tale (and it is powerful) is in the telling - even were I to reveal every plot point, I wouldn't be capturing what makes this story so special. Still, as a reviewer, I'll say this much: it concerns the narrator, a transplant to Los Angeles, and her neighbor, Angela. Angela makes the mistake of knocking on the narrator's door to borrow eggs. Anyway, I fear saying more. I'll just mention that though the narrator is a social worker, she has some anti-social tendencies.

I really don't know how else to say things about this marvelous story. If you'd like my copy of EQMM, leave a comment to that effect, and if you're lucky, you get it. Lucky or the only one to leave a comment... I'll check back in a day or two to see who gets the prize (and this one story does qualify the magazine as a prize).

"Blood and Bone in Bambooland", by Cameron Ashley

From: Plots With Guns, Issue #9, June 2010.

Apparently Cameron Ashley and I have the same since of humor, 'cause I laughed out loud a couple of times while reading "Blood and Bone in Bambooland". If this story were set in the U.S., it would have to be a Southern Gothic, but even with the Down Under milieu, it's still pretty damn Gothic.

And it has the best Anglo-accented monologue since The Limey.

The plot? Mark is boss John G.'s newest flunky. A couple of his other boys killed somebody they really maybe ought not have, but it's done now, and John G. needs somebody to clean up the mess. So Mark is taking a trip out to the country to see the Eggman, who handles that sort of job. Things don't go exactly as planned, though, and Mark gets caught up in a feud between the Eggman and his horticulturist neighbor, a disagreement that ends badly all 'round.

It's the narrative voice that carries the story, though. Mark is the only one who can see how absurd all the clowns around him are, and sometimes it's a struggle not to laugh right in their faces. The reader, however, is free to laugh with abandon. A dark comedy but one I enjoyed.

"Bronx, Summer, 1971", by Steven Torres

From: CrimeSpree #35 (March/April 2010).

Ernesto and Celia Santiago, an elderly Hispanic couple living in a modest third-floor walkup, were brutally murdered on the hottest day of the year. What troubled Detectives Woods and Carver was the absence of a motive. It appeared that someone wanted something and tortured the couple to get it. Then Woods spots a picture that gives them a hint: Ernesto and Celia, their arms around a smiling young man. Ray Cruz, a notorious drug dealer.

Cruz himself shows up soon after, distraught to the point where even the cops know he's not faking. The Santiagos were his godparents. Now Woods and Carver have to work fast, because they're not the only ones after the killers.

I'm breaking one of our rules here ("thou shalt not review other members' stories") because I like this one so much. It's told with great economy, with characters sketched out in just a few strokes, but entirely believable. Steven is really good at using unsympathetic characters, or outright villains, as the protagonists of his stories (see his Viktor Petrenko stories for another example), and I understand that Ray Cruz may return in the future.

"The 45 Steps", by Peter Crowther

From: The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries, ed. Mike Ashley. Carroll & Graf, 2007.

There was only one thing noteworthy about the Regal Hotel in Luddersedge. Not the elegance of its ballroom, which was really rather threadbare; not the quality of it's foie gras, as the cuisine tended towards tradional English; certainly not the long list of distinguished guests who'd stayed there. No, the only reason to remember the Regal was the opulence of the gentlemen's lavatory in the basement.

Arthur Clark's bathroom habits were equally well-known around the village. At ten o'clock every evening he would get up and head to what Max Reger called "the smallest room in the house", whether he were in his own home, or at the Conservative Club's Christmas banquent at the Regal. So regular were his habits, in fact, that they could be used against him, and one of the elegant stalls in the Regal's restroom could in fact become the setting for a locked-room murder.

This rather droll story was original to the book in which it appeared but deserves wider attention. A mixture of dark humor, fair-play detection, and the character of irascable Detective Inspector Malcolm Broadhurst combine to make this a delightful exercise in classic detection.

"How To Jail", by Dennis Tafoya

From: CrimeFactory, Vol. 2 Issue #3 - May 2010.

When Willis' brother Henry got out of jail, he moved into Willis' small Las Vegas apartment. But he's not out yet, not really. He doesn't talk much, and he doesn't do much. Mostly he sits and looks out the window. Sometimes Henry talks about his dad, a drunk and a jailbird, and how everything he told them about jail was wrong

Kelly lives in an apartment down the hall. Her boyfriend smacks her around sometimes. She comes down to Willis' place to see a friendly face and find some peace.

Henry's friend Dontay is getting out of jail. It's up to Henry to take him out, celebrate a bit. Reminisce about old times.

From these elements author Dennis Tafoya spins a tragedy writ small. These are people and situations we've seen before, but Tafoya's characters are closely observed and carefully drawn. "How to Jail" is a quiet story, not much action, but the ending still carries an emotional impact.

NBS Special Report: A Facelift

The updated look of Nasty. Brutish. Short. should be easier to maintain with Blogger's new template designer, just out of draft. I went for a cold look fitting our nasty, brutish title—but also a clean look, keeping all the page elements where they were. Enjoy.

"Scenarios" by Lawrence Block

From: The Dark End of the Street: New Stories of Sex and Crime by Today's Top Authors, ed. Jonathan Santlofer and S.J. Rozan. Bloomsbury, 2010.

Block's contribution to this anthology of literary and crime fiction authors begins with a sexual predator looking for his next victim at a bar. Just when I began to guess where the story was going, Block broke the "fourth wall", offering three different ways the story could turn out, one of which was "true".

If you don't mind Block breaking the fourth wall, this story is a fine show of the writer's imagination at work and how many different tales can be spun from the same starting point.

"Everything Tastes Like Whiskey", by Scott Wolven

From: Plots With Guns, Issue #8 Winter, 2010.

As John walks to work across the University of Idaho campus, .44 Magnum strapped to his hip, no one seems interested in him. He himself has a hard time forgetting that he'd shot a man just the week before. All he's done since is sit at his house and drink beer.

Despite the fact it was self-defense, his boss at the detective agency thinks it would be a good idea if he left town for a while. A rancher named Bill Warner has been having some problems with wolves, and maybe trespassers, and John is dispatched to take care of it. Warner himself is an old man, many years widowed, and a drunk.

John sets up early one morning in a spot where he can spot the wolves if they approach Warner's cattle, but instead of wolves he sees three Mexicans instead, boys or young men. He warns them off in no uncertain terms, but they've brought trouble with them.

What can I say? Another winner for Scott Wolven. The character of John - tough but sensitive - is well drawn, as that of Warner and John's elderly uncle. If you're not a big fan of Wolven's, well, it's time you started.

"I Am Madame X's Bodyguard", by Patricia Abbott

From: Needle: A Magazine of Noir, Spring 2010.

Lennie, the narrator of "I Am Madame X's Bodyguard", used to be a pro's pro, keeping guys like John Gotti safe from their occupational hazards. But he's not the man he used to be. Recently his biggest job was guarding Joey Bananas during a long, slow death that finally came at age 97.

Now, though, he's got a new job. Not exactly glamorous, but very, very necessary. His new client has one of the most dangerous jobs in the country: she's a book reviewer for the New York Times.

And not just any reviewer, but one who writes lines like "an odious self-portrait of the artist as a young jackass." As it turns out, she's just as critical of her bodyguard.

This story relies on a lot of inside baseball for the publishing crowd. Unless you're a regular reader of Sarah Weinman's review roundups you may not know who "Marilyn" is, for example. But if you're in on the joke, I suspect that you will find this story to be one of the funniest you've read in a while.

"Lapses", by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

From: The Second Black Lizard Anthology of Crime Fiction, ed. Ed Gorman.
Black Lizard Books, 1988

Ruth Donahue was on her way through the San Joaquin Valley when the pickup ahead of her wiped out, launching a dog into her windshield. Though the dog was killed, Ruth herself seemed to be okay. Maybe just a little... off.

After a trip to the hospital and a night in a motel, she feels ready to return to her home in San Luis Obispo. So she climbs into her rented Ford Escort and gets on the road. A little while later she glances at a road sign - and realizes she's driven two hundred miles out of her way. There's a gas station receipt on the seat beside her. She doesn't remember stopping.

She stops at a roadside church, welcoming a few minutes of peace with the friendly pastor. She sips the coffee he brings. And when she looks up...

Yarbro does a good job bringing Ruth's confusion and panic to the page. As the situations she finds herself in become increasingly bizarre, Ruth wonders Where have I been? What have I been doing? Though it takes a while to get going, "Lapses" is a fine, disturbing short story.

Derringer Winners

Yes, it's been all over the web. Yes, people are done with congratulations. In fact, some of the joy is probably ebbing from the winners, but... I thought I'd mention that the Derringer winners have been announced:

BEST FLASH STORY (Up to 1,000 Words)

"And Here's To You, Mrs. Edwardson" by Hamilton Waymire
Published in the webzine Big Pulp, November 23, 2009

BEST SHORT STORY (1,001 - 4,000 Words)

"Twas the Night" by Anita Page
Published in The Gift of Murder, October 2009

BEST LONG STORY (4,001 - 8,000 Words)

"Famous Last Words" by Doug Allyn
Published in EQMM, November 2009

BEST NOVELETTE (8,001 - 17,500 Words)

"Julius Katz" by Dave Zeltserman
Published in EQMM, September/October 2009

2010 RECIPIENT OF THE EDWARD D. HOCH MEMORIAL GOLDEN DERRINGER FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Lawrence Block


Links to many of the nominated stories are to be found at the Short Mystery Fiction Society website here.

Spinetingler Award Nominees

Just got word that Spinetingler has posted their nominees for best short story on the web. Take a look.

The Consummate Professional by Graham Bowlin

The current Thuglit has a nifty story. The profession in this story is that of cocaine vendor. The main character has a problem client and the problem client has a pretty girlfriend. And he beats her. There's not much question that the client deserves to die, but then he's wealthy and no longer susceptible to rat poison... And it's unprofessional to murder your clients. Probably in a cocaine vendor handbook.

The story backtracks to college days and looks forward to a time when the professional can retire, but that can't really happen unless the pretty girlfriend is willing to do her share. Share of what, you ask? Well, read it and see.

The prose is well-polished (though there may be a few excesses - hard to say. The site is called "Thuglit," after all...). The pace is good (not such an easy feat when you're flashing back). Overall, a very good read and when I see Graham Bowlin's name again, I'll certainly take a look.

Kiss Me, Dudley by Ed McBain

I picked up a copy of The McBain Files at a library sale, and this is the first McBain I read. Kiss Me, Dudley is a seriously deranged story. A woman walks into a PI's office and normal ends there. Her mate has caused her trouble by stealing 10 million and dying leaving her at the mercy of the people he stole from. Before the initial interview is over, the PI has belted his client. Before it's all over, the PI will have struck his client several times (and done worse) and gotten rid of the enemies - all 26 of them. With grenades... Bizarre and well worth the read.

"Drive-Thru" by David Dietrich

From: Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May 2010.

Working the midnight-to-six shift alone at the Atlas Burger drive-thru window, the narrator of this story doesn't believe he's being robbed when he hears an unfamiliar man's voice through his piece-of-junk headset. Bored, and perhaps jaded, the narrator engages the would-be robber in conversation.

This isn't how you might expect a crime story to unfold, but it's just right for AHMM's annual humor issue. Disembodied dialogue across the narrator's headset and the drive-thru speaker drives the story yet keeps it unpredictable.

Nowhere to Go by Iain Rowan

I've been reading Iain Rowan for a long time now going back to the heady days when Shred of Evidence was around. He's a master of creepiness and this AHMM story from the end of last year is not an exception.

Here's the set up: A man with way too much time on his hands witnesses a murder via his laptop. He calls the authorities and gives what information he has, but it appears to be a wild goose chase as far as the police are concerned. There is no evidence to corroborate the story, no missing person who might have been the victim, etc. There's some chance, of course, that the witness is insane, but, well... Isn't that always the case? The man decides to investigate for himself (after all, his sanity is in question, and one likes to clear those issues up) but what he finds out won't at all be what he expected.

Mr. Rowan has put together a tricky story and made it run like clockwork.

Out of Her Depth by John C. Boland

The December 2009 issue of AHMM includes this story by John Boland, an author whose work I've admired before. In this story, the reader is treated to multiple points of view and voices (complex and a nifty bit of craftsmanship, but never irksome to the reader). A man is dying on a ship in the opening section, but this quickly turns to the hiring of a detective by the potential widow. It seems she and her millionaire husband were in the midst of settling a divorce which would cut her out of his estate unless... unless it turns out her husband died before the divorce was finalized.

Meggie Trevor takes the case and goes to retrace the potential victims last steps.Meggie's voice throughout the remainder of the story is, I think, the main draw. She sounds like the type of person you may want to know - real. Not an easy thing to do in a short story.

The Caretaker by Terence Faherty

The December 2009 issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine has a story you shouldn't miss by Terence Faherty. The man writes delicately beautiful prose which is not something that can be said for every mystery writer. His care in phrasing and word choice is phenomenal and worth study.

Anyway...

Anne Abbott is taking care of a house in Jackson Hole Wyoming. The place is isolated from society under a big sky, and the only other person for miles around is the caretaker of another house not too far away - a mysterious stranger with a limp. Can't hardly think of anything that could possibly go wrong there...

Except that Anne is not the type of young lady who could let a mysterious stranger simply float into and out of her life without her investigating.

And her investigations turn up what she thinks might be a star-crossed love affair. but what role does a hatchet play in it all? Well, take a look to find out. I'll mail my beat up copy to whoever asks first.

The Hate Tapes by Doug Allyn

The March AHMM fairly brims with great stories, and this is one of them. The story starts with a rock concert (I've never been to one of those) by an aging band in 1991. Their heyday was about twenty years past and they thought they'd seen it all. Then, during the last song, there's a scuffle on the dance floor and a fan winds up dead.

Nothing to do with the band, right? Well, it turns out the lead singer knows the guy - the stabee, if you will. The police want the singer to stay in town since no one else knows the dead guy. And it turns out that the last words on the dead man's lips were "hate tapes." Is that a reference to the recording medium or a reference to the music that was being played or something else entirely? Figuring that out is a key to figuring out who killed the guy.

Doug Allyn is a favorite at AHMM, though his stories sometimes leave me a little cold. This one, however, was quite good.

"The Messenger" by Wayne L. Wilson

From: The Darker Mask: Heroes From the Shadows ed. Gary Phillips and Christopher Chambers

Wilson's contribution to this collection of dark superhero tales opens with a man walking along the Venice Beach boardwalk entranced by the best trumpet-playing he's ever heard. Following the music through a thick fog, he encounters a few people who don't seem to hear it. Finally he finds the trumpet player, an imposing figure who oddly seems to have no weight. Realizing the figure is God or an angel, the man has a hard time accepting what he's told, until the spirit of his dead wife appears.

The tone of continued skepticism here nicely balances the more "out-there" elements. Not your typical feel-good story.

The Man Who Was Kicked to Death by Pablo Palacio

The current Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine has a story that is terribly inventive. Sadly, the author, Pablo Palacio, has been dead for some years. K.j.a. Wishnia has translated and introduced the story and it deserves to be known.

In the story, the narrator reads of a man who was kicked to death. The man had made his way to a police precinct before dying and when the police had asked who had kicked him and why, the victim's story is thin. Since the man dies soon after, the thin story is all there is. Or is it?

The narrator, after waiting a few days to see if more of the story comes out, takes it upon himself to investigate. Of course, he isn't a police officer and doesn't have anything more than the short news article, but he goes through a process of ratiocination (that's right, I said ratiocination...) that would have made Dupin envious. The narrator is clearly crazed, but he also seems to be clearly right in his deductions about the crime.

In any event, this is a story tha deserves to be read by many more and Wishnia and AHMM have done mystery lovers a great kindness. Here's hoping there are more Palacio stories out there.

"I Seen That" by S.J. Rozan

From: Once Upon a Crime: An Anthology of Murder, Mayhem, and Suspense ed. Gary R. Bush and Chris Everheart

In three pages, Rozan's contribution to an anthology honoring Minneapolis mystery bookshop Once Upon a Crime delivers a New York character as only Bronx-born Rozan could write him. In a one-sided conversation with bartender Frankie, he fills in the backstory behind a woman's murder just reported on the news.

R.I.P. Stuart M. Kaminsky

Along with the rest of the mystery community, I was saddened to hear of the passing yesterday of former MWA Grandmaster Stuart M. Kaminsky at the age of 75. Kaminsky's prose was so personable, I felt I knew him though we had never met. Click here to read my previous coverage of Kaminsky's work on Nasty. Brutish. Short.

"Ten Gallons of Infected Saliva, or, The Cuckold, Avenged" by Scott Phillips

From: Uncage Me ed. Jen Jordan. Bleak House Books, 2009.

Leading off an anthology on the many forms of transgression, this story follows Amos, a college kid willing to work at a porno theater to accumulate the hours he needs to join the projectionist's union. Amos's wry narration reminded me of Lawrence Block's Chip Harrison, his voice so engaging as to almost make smut palatable.

One of Amos's friends, Tad, works at a funeral parlor and carries on an affair with his boss's wife, Beth. One night, Tad takes Beth to the theater, followed shortly by a man with a gun. Flustered, Amos lets the armed man into the theater, and he proceeds to shoot himself. Though the man's name is never mentioned, it's implied he is Beth's husband, Tad's boss. That this shooting is the only act I considered a crime in this story testifies to the persuasive power of Phillips's writing.

You can also hear Phillips read this story at Seth Harwood's CrimeWAV.

Homework by Phil Lovesey

The latest EQMM has a story by the son of one of my favorite short story writers, Peter Lovesey. Phil Lovesey's story, "Homework" is a good crime story told in an interesting way - a tenth grader's homework essay. Now, there is a danger in a tenth grader's essay - to make it seem authentic, the author, no matter how skilled, must make the essay read poorly. In the case of this story, for instance, there are a fair number of run on sentences. Oh, and digressions. And fairly superficial readings of Hamlet. If you've taught English, you know what I'm talking about.

But these things don't ever overwhelm the story. And the story is a good one. The student feels she's been slighted by the teacher who asked for the assignment, and she has learned some details about that teacher that he might not want divulged. Things go downhill for the teacher from there. And he won't know who has devised his doom until he reads the homework assignments. For reasons I won't give away, it might be a while before he gets to them.

Anyway, if you want a good story told in a unique manner, try out the latest EQMM.

The Case of the Piss-Poor Gold by Lee Goldberg

Lee Goldberg is the author of the Monk novels based on Adrian Monk, one of the more colorful detectives ever put together. If you don't know, Monk is a brilliant man beset by just about every obssessive-compulsive behavior possible. This story, however, is not about ADRIAN Monk. It's about a distant relative, Artemis Monk who solves crimes (in his spare time) in a California gold rush town that's still in its unclean infancy.The story is told by Mrs. Guthrie, his assistant.

The main crux of the story is how a town drunk who literally pisses about town (to Monk's grief) was able to sell a land claim that seems to contain plenty of gold now, but had previously been determined to be barren. As the town's only assayer, Monk can testify about the former barrenness. As Monk, he can figure out what crime was committed to make the land have more gold in it now.

I'll have to say I hadn't thought of the solution ahead of time which is always a good sign, but this story is more than just a good puzzle (or two, Monk also quickly wraps up a murder - his powers are prodigous). It is also a good portrait of a mining town and its inhabitants, paying particular attention to the dirt. More importantly for me, the story had me laugh out loud a couple of times, and that is a terribly difficult thing to do on paper. Most funny lines die once written down, but not in Goldberg's hands. That's magic. Well worth the price of the latest Ellery Queen.

"Discovery" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

From: Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, November 2008.

Pia Cardenas, solo attorney in a small New Mexico town, represents Nan Hughes. Nan's husband, Ty, tried to outrun a train in his truck and supposedly died in the resulting crash. Shortly before he died, Ty left a voicemail for Nan, confessing to trying to beat the train. Not only does the evidence seem stacked against her, but Pia also feels overwhelmed by the large law firm representing the railroad.

Leaning toward asking Nan to settle, Pia nevertheless covers all her bases, running down the list of witnesses. Her legwork pays off as she discovers the truth behind the accident. This is a classic David vs. Goliath story livened up by Pia's epiphany that she prefers working solo in a small town to a job with a more prominent firm.

While Pia isn't a private investigator by name, "Discovery" has many of the best characteristics of the P.I. story. I can see why it was nominated for a Shamus Award by the Private Eye Writers of America.

NBS Special Report: 2009 Shamus Award Nominees

Announced by the Private Eye Writers of America:

For Best Short Story:

“Family Values,” by Mitch Alderman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine [AHMM], June 2008)
“Last Island South,” by John C. Boland (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine [EQMM], September/October 2008)
“The Blonde Tigress,” by Max Allan Collins (EQMM, June 2008)
“Discovery,” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (AHMM, November 2008)
“Panic on Portage Path,” by Dick Stodghill (AHMM, January/February 2008)

Interview with Blake Crouch

Blake Crouch is known for his psychological thrillers like Desert Places and his latest novel Abandon.* He's also recently turned his hands at the short story form. I reviewed one of his stories, "Shining Rock," last week after it ran in EQMM and he has another story out sharing space in an anthology, Uncage Me!, with one of my Stoop, the Thief stories. He was kind enough to take time away from work and family and answer a few questions for me:

1 - If it doesn't reveal too much about the plot, can you talk about the genesis of the "Shining Rock" story?

When I was a boy, I did a lot of backpacking with my parents and younger brother, and one of our favorite places to go was Shining Rock Wilderness in the North Carolina Mountains . One summer evening as we were setting up camp in a remote area of the wilderness called Beech Spring Gap, a gentleman came over to our camp and introduced himself. He was a burly fellow in his fifties wearing blue shorts and a vest brimming with camping accessories and various patches. He also had a machete lashed to his back and mentioned in the course of small-talk that he’d fought in Vietnam . The interaction was unsettling and more than a little awkward. I was twelve at the time but found out years later from my father that he’d been terrified, so much in fact that he and my mom had whispered in their tent late that night, debating leaving because they were afraid this man was going to come back and murder all of us while we slept. Obviously, that didn’t happen. My family struck up a friendship with the man (who turned out to be a gentle soul) and we accompanied him on future backpacking trips. But the strangeness of that initial encounter and the fear my parents must have felt never left me, and the experience inspired a short story called “Shining Rock.”

2 - You've also written a story for the anthology UNCAGE ME called "*69". That story has a seriously creepy element to it. Do you work on creepiness or does it spring naturally?

Well, in full disclosure, you have a story in UNCAGE ME called "The Biography of Stoop, the Thief" which I thought was just first-rate and had a real delicate emotional core. Might be my favorite of the collection. Creepiness does tend to infiltrate my writing. I think it's the shady side of human nature that fascinates me (all of us crime writers, right?). So far, I've been devoted to exploring how far down our depravity goes (bottomless I think), but I'm trying as of late, to see the way out. We know we're bad, but so what? What do we do about it? The dicey morality stuff is infinitely harder.

3 - Is short story writing fundamentally different from novel writing for you?

Yes, I think it's much more difficult. With a short story, I'll only start writing one if the idea is very strong, self-contained, and something I'm just dying to do. It's one of the hardest forms of writing I think, because it also has to have a twist, and I don't mean a surprise ending, but a tension between reader expectation and what actually happens, no matter how small. Otherwise it's just like reading the alphabet. I also find that unlike novels, with short fiction, I can put it aside for months at a time, and then come back to it. My stories really benefit from that time away, but if I took off that much time from a novel in progress, I'd lose it. But I love writing short fiction. When it works, it just flat-out works. Like a gut-punch.

4 - Any favorite short story writers in or out of the genre that readers should be aware of?

Well, the old pros...Raymond Carver, Elmore Leonard, Lawrence Block. I love Annie Proulx's stuff. Adam Haslett's first short story collection YOU ARE NOT A STRANGER HERE really made me want to start writing short fiction.

5 - Any short stories coming in the immediate future?

My story, "Remaking" just came out in the THRILLER 2 anthology, as well as an audio exclusive called "On the Good, Red Road " that I recorded as a bonus for the Brilliance Audiobook of ABANDON. Of course, there was the abomination called SERIAL I wrote with JA Konrath which is far and away the most messed-up thing I've written. His publisher, Grand Central, made it available everywhere as a free eBook. So with 5 stories out this year, that may be it for 2009. I've got two longer short stories that I'm really happy with, and one more I still need to rework. The two that are finished are on submission, so you know how that goes. Could see them this year, maybe next, maybe never. It's a tough business.

My many thanks to Blake for taking the time.

Shining Rock by Blake Crouch

The May 2009 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine contains a story by suspense write Blake Crouch. Blake, a friend of mine and stablemate at St. Martin's Press, tends to write stories with a fairly high creepiness factor sometimes accompanied by gore, but not in this case. The suspense is all there. You know bad things are going to happen. It's just hard to tell to whom and who by.

In the story, a couple facing middle age are hiking to a remote area of the woods for their annual camping trip. This is the first time in a long while they've been without their children, and after a few drinks at night, they get a visit from a lonely man with a very sad story. There is an air of menance about him, and the couple is creeped out. When he finally makes his way back to his camp, the couple discuss the man's story and, well... let's just say the story resonates with them in a strange way. Unexpected (at least by me) and the couple decides, after analyzing the story and the coincidence of being encountered in the lonliest part of the woods, that the man is out to kill them. How they react to this tidbit, however, makes the story. Well, that and the last thing the lonely man says.

Anyway, Crouch certainly knows suspense, and this was a grand example. Read the intro to the story at the link.

The Incense Murder by I.J. Parker

The September 2009 Alfred Hitchcock has a story from one of my favorite mystery short story writers, IJ Parker. Parker's main character is Sugawara (try saying that 3 times, fast) Akitada. The setting is 11 century Japan, Heian-Kyo (modern Kyoto). The stories generally revolve around some aspect of Japanese culture of the period, often they take place during festivals, for instance.

In this case, Akitada is asked to investigate a murder that may just have been caused by burning incense. The person asking him to look into the case had no love for the deceased but thinks the real target was himself. And who himself is is important to the tale - Akitada's cousin, a wealthy man who hasn't hidden his dislike of Akitada's and his mother but, since he is a blood relation, may just leave Akitada and mom a fortune when he dies.

Akitada, always very smart, takes the case, gets to the bottom of things and ends the story pretty much under arrest though with a chance he'll be set free. How he got into this mess is one of the several twists you'll have to read the story to figure out. Another homerun from IJ Parker.

I see from her website that her next Akitada book is on its way to bookstores. It's called "The Convict's Sword" and it has already garnered a rave from Publisher's Weekly: "Besides smoothly mixing action and deduction, Parker gives her protagonist an emotional depth that raises her to the front rank of contemporary historical writers." This is a starred review. Can't wait...

By the way, if you've never read an IJ Parker story, let me help you up from your benighted position. Here's a link.

"The Perfect Sucker", by Leslie Charteris

From: Thanks to the Saint, Pocket Books, 1957.

Sometimes Simon Templar, better known as The Saint, isn't looking for trouble. Sometimes he just wants to kick back, relax, and enjoy himself. And it's true that there's nothing he likes better than seeing come to a just end, that wears on a man. Sometimes he just wants to go fishing.

Which he does, at a fishing camp on the Rogue River in Oregon. But his trip turns into a busman's holiday when he's taken for a mark by a couple of crafty con men working a sweet scheme. Or so it seems...

The Saint stories have a unique charm and are great entertainment, despite the fact that Simon Templar himself should come across as an insufferably smug English twit. He comes across as a wittier James Bond - a jack of all trades, admired by men, irresistible to women, etc etc, righting wrongs for his own amusement instead of Queen and country. But just this once he nearly puts his foot in it, and badly enough that he'd never forgive himself. As usual, chance smiles upon him, and he eventually finds a way to put things right.

These stories are nearly forgotten today, but I can't recommend them enough. Especially good is The Best of The Saint, Vol. 2, with a forward by Sir Roger Moore.

EQMM and AHMM Giveaway

I've got a dozen (or more) EQMM/AHMM magazines from the last year or three sitting around clogging up bookshelf space. Anyone want them? Leave a comment to that effect and I'll check back tomorrow. If there's more than one interested party, I'll pick from a hat. Same contest at my blog so you have two chances to win (that is, I've got two boxes of magazines primed for the post office...)

"Guy Walks Into a Bar..." by Lee Child

Published in The New York Times (June 6, 2009).

Child's contribution to the Times' Summer Thrills fiction series starts with a girl who catches Jack Reacher's eye at a Greenwich Village bar in the wee hours. She's no older than nineteen, Russian, and Reacher's instincts tell him she's about to be kidnapped. Longtime fans balance a trust in Reacher's take on most situations with the knowledge that, sooner or later, Child will upend expectations. When he does it is the surprise.

"Heat" by Toni McGee Causey

Toni McGee Causey just tweeted about this story, calling it a very hot, sexy prequel to her novel series starring Bobbie Faye Sumrall. I've heard good buzz about Toni's series and have her first book on my shelf, but have yet to get to it, which allows me to give a first-time reader's account of "Heat".

No crime or mystery is at the center of this story. Bobbie Faye's best friend Cam, an LSU quarterback-turned-state policeman, has just helped her out of a bad relationship, and the two of them are preparing a crawfish boil. The story starts from Bobbie Faye's viewpoint. She's annoyed with Cam, wishing he'd see her as more than a friend. Causey then switches to Cam's viewpoint, and it turns out the attraction is mutual. The story ends in a connection that isn't very graphic, but serves to release the sexual tension just the same.

Events are alluded to and enough of Bobbie Faye's voice comes through that I want to read and fill in the rest.

Shanks on Misdirection by Robert Lopresti

I've just gotten into Robert Lopresti's long running Shanks series, and they're quite cool. The main character, Leopold Longshanks is a professional mystery writer and more than a little crumudgeonly. In the last story I reviewed, Shanks skewered a self-published author. In this one, he has troubles with writer of nasty reviews and a cozy writer who prefers to be called a "traditional" mystery writer. When the cozy writer's husband talks about having his ATM card eaten by the machine, Shanks suspects something more sinister than a simple ATM malfunction.

In any event, the mystery of this story is relatively slight (though those not knowledgeable of short cons might take a tip or two here) but the story makes up for that in attitude. Shanks and his wife have a healthy back and forth as does Shanks and just about anybody else. Getting back at the reviewer is a nice extra in the story.

"Follow Up" by Jo Dereske

From: The Prosecution Rests ed. Linda Fairstein. Little, Brown, and Co., 2009.

In the middle of a blizzard, Michigan parole board member Jeff Willett comes to the aid of a woman stranded in the snow. He learns the woman is the mother of a possible parolee, Danny Hartman, who served time of holding up a 7-Eleven. Desperate to deliver letters in favor of Danny's parole, Danny's mother breaks from Jeff when his car runs off the road.

Jeff searches for her for a while, but when he meets with Danny, the kid seems unwilling to talk or accept possible help from his mother. I wasn't sure whether Jeff wanted to help Danny's mother reach the parole board or if he just wanted to avoid the complications her letters would bring. Either way, this story is a well-delivered, bleak look at the system.

NBS Special Report: 2009 Best Short Story Edgar

As Twittered by Sarah Weinman and posted to The Rap Sheet:

Best Short Story: “Skinhead Central,” by T. Jefferson Parker (from The Blue Religion, edited by Michael Connelly; Little, Brown)

Also nominated: “A Sleep Not Unlike Death,” by Sean Chercover (from Hardcore Hardboiled, edited by Todd Robinson; Kensington Publishing); “Skin and Bones,” by David Edgerley Gate (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, October 2008); “Scratch of a Woman,” by Laura Lippman (from Hardly Knew Her; Morrow); and “La Vie en Rose,” by Dominique Mainard (from Paris Noir; edited by Aurelien Masson; Akashic Books)

G. Miki Hayden, Redux

A couple of weeks ago I posted the first part of an interview with one of my favorite short story writers*. Then I lost internet service for a few days, then life got in the way, now I'm back to finish what I started. In fact, what follows is the entire interview. The first two Q&As duplicate what I posted some time ago. Enjoy:

ST: I really love your Miriam Obadah stories for AHMM. I find them moving besides being good mysteries. Do you concentrate on one aspect (emotion) instead of another (puzzle) at different times as you write or do the stories just come together as the reader sees them?

GMH: Thanks so much, Steve.

I don’t concentrate on one aspect and then layer in other aspects of a story when I write. I also rarely restructure. I write and then polish. However, while I certainly think that writing everything at the same time produces a more cohesive piece, I also will suggest that students (I teach for Writer’s Digest at Writers Online Workshops) can layer in elements later on if they aren’t able to provide them in the initial draft.

The most common essentials that students will miss in their writing are emotion, setting, and point-of-view character internals.

The eliciting of emotion is definitely an important fundamental of fiction, but that’s probably the hardest thing for writers to do. So I don’t really mean that, as creating suspense, tension, the onset of romance, or even reader sorrow is extremely difficult. If someone can actually trigger reader feelings—wonderful—she may make a lot of money selling her manuscripts. But if she can’t, then she can at least include the mechanical representation of these sensations. We are always able to write, “His heart thudded in his chest and he thought he would faint.” That will substitute for the real thing in many instances, and a writer does need to have at least some of that to round out any story.

As for setting, I encourage students to sketch in a few specifics, but also to keep the setting alive throughout a scene. For instance, if the characters are in deep conversation in a school cafeteria, let’s hear a little bit of the noise—the crash of trays, the laughter of the kids—and maybe even see someone slide on spilt milk. But I say sketch in these details, because the setting shouldn’t take away from the dialogue. It should simply create part of the reality, the background part.

The other most-often-missing element in fiction by new writers is point-of-view character thought. And some of this can be emotional as well, so I don’t entirely separate the two. The more the writer lets the reader know what’s going on with the character, the fuller the story becomes for his audience. Of course this, too, has to be paced out, and has to be on focus for the scene and the story. As writers, we don’t want to give stream of consciousness, but we also don’t want readers to be in the dark as to what the character believes, in regard to the situation.

I said I mostly don’t restructure, but sometimes I do, and the times when I do, I restructure the opening. The opening, especially of a short story, has to be quick and offer the hook as soon as possible. Writers often feel the need to “develop” or to “set up” the story, but less here is more. We can start quickly and then come back, and through internals give more development and setup.



ST: Do you have any methods either for the generation of short story ideas or for the writing process that you can share?

Ideas are everywhere, so instead of talking about how to generate them, I’ll say that once a writer has an idea and has started a project he ought to stick with that until he’s done. Worse than not being able to come up with an idea is not being able to carry through the writing to the end. I think that’s a chronic difficulty. Trust me, no story idea is significantly better than any other. No idea is “the” idea. The treatment of the idea is what really counts.

With a short story—as opposed to a full-length manuscript—I generally prefer to have a fairly well-formed sense of what I’m writing when I sit down to do the draft. I find that thinking through the logic of the story and knowing where it’s going can make the writing process a whole lot easier.

On the other hand, not everyone works in the same way, and not every piece will proceed along the same path, either. Writers do have to learn to trust their own processes. But I’m suggesting that if someone works out the short story plot in his head before he sits down, he’ll find the writing flows more easily.

That’s harder with a novel of course. Novels are longer. I don’t say that to be facetious exactly, but people do sometimes ask what the difference is between writing a short story and writing a novel. That novels are longer is pretty much my answer as to the difference. The length of the work affects the pacing of the story arc and may even account for the proverbial “sagging middle” of the novel—the segment of the manuscript where the writer herself sags and has no idea what to do next with her characters. (The answer is—push through to the end.)


ST: Your stories have been nominated for and won awards. Care to give the genesis for one or two of them?

GMH: Again, it’s not the idea, really. What makes a story successful is the execution. And believe me, too, a story can be successful and never be published, much less nominated for anything. Selling a story is the goal, but it’s not the actual hallmark of success. I just this year sold two stories I’ve been trying to sell for a number of years. I look at it as having finally found the proper markets. The stories didn’t change, but I found markets that really wanted this exact type of material. These, by the way, are stories with Middle Eastern protagonists—Moslems.

Some of the stories I’ve sold immediately, however, were stories I completely geared to a specific market with very exact requirements. In that case, I sat down and generated the idea and the story based on what the publication or anthology wanted. For instance, I did have a story nominated for a Derringer, and that story appeared in Babs Lakey’s anthology entitled DIME. Obviously she wanted something a little bit on the pulp side. What I did in writing “The Girl in Apartment 2A” was to take an idea and a character I had for a novel and turn it into a story. In this case I already had the character and her particulars and the story was sort of a prequel to what I felt would work for a novel.

I think, in other words, that writers can use short stories to test out characters they might want to write more about. Writers might also want to test a few themes that interest them, such as a period of history or a setting. Or a continuing protagonist.

But let me backtrack a little in explaining the execution side since I’ve mention that a couple of times. What I mean here is that the writer must add something to the story that makes it stand out. What will make a story rise above the rest might be the complexity of the background. Maybe the writer can charge the story up with a Wall Street setting that seems to jump from the pages of the Wall Street Journal. The story is timely and adds a chilling depth of financial detail in describing a multibillion dollar, even deadly, fraud.

Or maybe the story replicates the plot of a well-known novel from another era—but in the end adds an exciting twist. Or the story may bring in rich historical detail, which is something I myself like to do. I had a story published last year that was set in 1826, during the building of Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York. ...That was inspired, actually, by a visit some folks from our MWA chapter made to Sing Sing in the company of fellow member, federal Judge Andy Peck.

While I do know of some stories about the spouse buried in the back garden that then flourishes or a rival writer tricked into eating certain foods that have gone on and won prizes, this is the exception rather than the rule. Trite and tried may conquer in the end, but not usually. Generally speaking, we should attempt to present a finely etched, well-developed, different sort of story if we want to compete in a market as crowded as this one for short stories is.

ST: You also write sci-fi. Do you find there's a big difference in how you go about constructing your stories depending on the genre?

GMH: In writing science fiction, unless the setting is a known one into which I introduce changes, I probably do much less research while writing. What I’ve done with a lot of my science fiction stories, however, has been to write them as mysteries—or as crime fiction. The beauty of the mystery story is that with a high-stakes, well-focused situation, the format of the story is in some sense a given and has an automatic power. Here, instead of researching the setting, you can think one up. However, research can actually apply in science fiction in many instances. For instance, an alien species can be based on earthly reptiles or types of insects. Or the intergalactic society we write about might have as its counterpart the culture of a South American Indian tribe. Or we may need to research the latest in particle physics to find a way to explain our multiverses.

The actual construction of the story, however, will be pretty much the same in science fiction or in mystery or even in romance—plotted around a central aim of the protagonist, or a central conflict. The protagonist makes progress, is stymied, makes progress, is blocked, overcomes, and eventually wins the day. How many conflicts then depends on the length of the story. Yes, really.

ST: What short story writers--mystery or otherwise—have inspired you?

GMH: Offhand I can think of three short stories that have really inspired me. One was by Dostoevsky and it simply overwhelmed me with the reality of the character and the protagonist’s situation. The story, “White Nights,” has been adapted for the screen several times, and a new digital version—transposed to L.A.—apparently will come out some time soon. I guess I wasn’t the only one to react to the story.

Another story, and I recall neither the author nor the story’s title, was set in the not-too-distant future in which the earth is simply overcrowded with people. This story featured each of the points of view of all the roommates (several) in one small apartment. I’ve never read a short story before or since with so many protagonists or one that gave such a strong feeling of a realistic, possible future for mankind.

The third story that influenced me I remember exactly nothing about except my impression. This story ran in a major magazine, a market that paid a lot for the story. And reading that story, I understood why it had been chosen—because in the end my emotions were profoundly affected. The story delved much more deeply than most stories do. The author made more extreme choices in the details than we typically do as writers. And thus the story had real impact and was published in a significant magazine.

I’ll add my impressions of a fourth story, one by a well-thought-of mystery writer. The writing was exceptionally skilled, and the story very different. It was, in fact, written in second person, and how often is that done? However, I found the story despicable and pointless. It had no moral, ethical center, and thus was simply, to me, an exercise in inhumanity. Writing that doesn’t do something to raise us all up (even writing about crime from a psychopath’s point of view can fly the flag of the radiant)—writing that doesn’t contribute to the betterment of our common situation on this earth either through pure entertainment or illumination—is to me without purpose. We writers create as well as reflect our civilization; we thus have a responsibility. That well-paid-for, well-published story also inspired me, but in a completely different respect. Even for writers (as with physicians), the motto should be “first do no harm.”

G. Miki Hayden is the author of The Naked Writer, a comprehensive, easy-to-read style and composition guide for all levels of writers.

"In My Hands" by Sarah Cortez

From: The Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery ed. Sarah Cortez and Liz Martinez, Arte Publico Press, 2006.

This story details the unlikely friendship between go-getter real estate agent Calais and gold-digger Elizabeth. Elizabeth and her handsome husband Winston seem like the perfect couple until Winston leaves her for a younger woman. Distraught, Elizabeth becomes convinced Winston will try to kill her to get out of paying alimony.

One day, Elizabeth goes missing, and her friend Kathy asks Calais to check on her. Discovering what appears to be a struggle, Calais imagines what might have happened and how she can turn it to her advantage.

Cortez meticulously spins the clues into two different scenarios and shows how quickly friends can turn on each other.

Interview with G. Miki Hayden, Part I

If you've been reading my reviews here, you know I'm a great admirer of Edgar winner G. Miki Hayden's short stories. If you haven't been reading my reviews, then shame on you. SHAME ON YOU!!

In any event, I asked a few questions and she taught a master lesson. Here is part one:

ST: I really love your Miriam Obadah stories for AHMM. I find them moving besides being good mysteries. Do you concentrate on one aspect (emotion) instead of another (puzzle) at different times as you write or do the stories just come together as the reader sees them?

GMH: Thanks so much, Steve.

I don’t concentrate on one aspect and then layer in other aspects of a story when I write. I also rarely restructure. I write and then polish. However, while I certainly think that writing everything at the same time produces a more cohesive piece, I also will suggest that students (I teach for Writer’s Digest at Writers Online Workshops) can layer in elements later on if they aren’t able to provide them in the initial draft.

The most common essentials that students will miss in their writing are emotion, setting, and point-of-view character internals.

The eliciting of emotion is definitely an important fundamental of fiction, but that’s probably the hardest thing for writers to do. So I don’t really mean that THE WRITER NEEDS TO ACTUALLY EVOKE A FEELING, as creating suspense, tension, the onset of romance, or even reader sorrow is extremely difficult. If someone can actually trigger reader feelings—wonderful—she may make a lot of money selling her manuscripts. But if she can’t, then she can at least include the mechanical representation of these sensations. We are always able to write, “His heart thudded in his chest and he thought he would faint.” That will substitute for the real thing in many instances, and a writer does need to have at least some of that to round out any story.

As for setting, I encourage students to sketch in a few specifics, but also to keep the setting alive throughout a scene. For instance, if the characters are in deep conversation in a school cafeteria, let’s hear a little bit of the noise—the crash of trays, the laughter of the kids—and maybe even see someone slide on spilt milk. But I say sketch in these details, because the setting shouldn’t take away from the dialogue. It should simply create part of the reality, the background part.

The other most-often-missing element in fiction by new writers is point-of-view character thought. And some of this can be emotional as well, so I don’t entirely separate the two. The more the writer lets the reader know what’s going on with the character, the fuller the story becomes for his audience. Of course this, too, has to be paced out, and has to be on focus for the scene and the story. As writers, we don’t want to give stream of consciousness, but we also don’t want readers to be in the dark as to what the character believes, in regard to the situation.

I said I mostly don’t restructure, but sometimes I do, and the times when I do, I restructure the opening. The opening, especially of a short story, has to be quick and offer the hook as soon as possible. Writers often feel the need to “develop” or to “set up” the story, but less here is more. We can start quickly and then come back, and through internals give more development and setup.

ST: Do you have any methods either for the generation of short story ideas or for the writing process that you can share?

GMH: Ideas are everywhere, so instead of talking about how to generate them, I’ll say that once a writer has an idea and has started a project he ought to stick with that until he’s done. Worse than not being able to come up with an idea is not being able to carry through the writing to the end. I think that’s a chronic difficulty. Trust me, no story idea is significantly better than any other. No idea is “the” idea. The treatment of the idea is what really counts.

With a short story—as opposed to a full-length manuscript—I generally prefer to have a fairly well-formed sense of what I’m writing when I sit down to do the draft. I find that thinking through the logic of the story and knowing where it’s going can make the writing process a whole lot easier.

On the other hand, not everyone works in the same way, and not every piece will proceed along the same path, either. Writers do have to learn to trust their own processes. But I’m suggesting that if someone works out the short story plot in his head before he sits down, he’ll find the writing flows more easily.

That’s harder with a novel of course. Novels are longer. I don’t say that to be facetious exactly, but people do sometimes ask what the difference is between writing a short story and writing a novel. That novels are longer is pretty much my answer as to the difference. The length of the work affects the pacing of the story arc and may even account for the proverbial “sagging middle” of the novel—the segment of the manuscript where the writer herself sags and has no idea what to do next with her characters. (The answer is—push through to the end.)


****

G. Miki Hayden is the author of The Naked Writer, a comprehensive, easy-to-read style and composition guide for all levels of writers.

Shanks Gets Killed by Robert Lopresti

Robert Lopresti writes several series of short stories for Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine and has been nominated for and won a Derringer Award. Shanks is a mystery writer who winds up solving crimes. Like a lot of real writers, Shanks is a bit on the surly side and with a biting sense of humor. In this story, he has been dragooned into a mystery weekend at a resort where he's supposed to be the celebrity author and get whacked on the first night - this means he doesn't have much to do.

Then the grand prize, a first edition of The Maltese Falcon, goes missing and Shanks is dragooned again. After all, if he's not busy acting a part, he might as well save the resort the trouble and fuss of having the police around bothering guests. Of course, he gets to the bottom of it all, but how he does it and the humor that goes into the interrogations he has to conduct make the story worth the read.

In the process of solving the crime, Shanks gives the reader a glimpse into a subset of the mystery world I hadn't really considered before. Are people really that competitive when they go to a bed and breakfast for those mystery weekends? I hope that's a product of Lopresti's imagination.

Without Anesthesia by Maceias Nunes

As I often do, I started reading the latest EQMM with the shortest story in the volume - I'm a notoriously slow reader. Short stories can take me days. Anyway, in this case, the story was quite short - about three pages. Still, the author - this is his first fiction - was able to pack quite a punch. The story is about a Nazi hiding in Brazil. In this case, the narrator is offered money to keep quiet about the Nazi. The narrator being poor but principled means this won't be an easy decision. The fact that the narrator is in love with the Nazi's daughter makes it even more difficult. Anyway, what the narrator decides and, especially why, is the twist here.

Then, of course, there's the question of whether you can ever be happy again once you've been propositioned by a Nazi. In any event, the prose is crisp and clear, but I felt the story could have been helped by being longer - I would have liked more development of the narrator. Still, if you're going to err about the length of a story, it's better to be too short than too long. Don't get me wrong. The story is a good read and worthy of your attention. I guess I'd just like it if there were more of it to enjoy.

"The Case of the Extra Ventriloquist" by Ron Goulart

From: Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May 2009.

In 1951 Los Angeles, detective comic strip artist Jack Ortega happens upon children's radio host Polly Renfrew, trussed up and gagged in the woods. Smitten, Jack unties Polly and asks how she ended up there. Polly and her dummy, Sally Sawdust, were supposed to entertain at the mansion of famous actress Mona Tardy. According to Ms. Tardy, another ventriloquist showed up in Polly's place and stole $200,000 worth of jewels and bearer bonds.

Polly deduces who's behind the theft by having Jack sketch a likeness of the villainous ventriloquist's dummy, but the next day, Polly goes missing and Jack has to play detective to find her.

I was a fan of the early 90s Tek series, ghostwritten for William Shatner by Ron Goulart. Featuring the same lighthearted humor and distinctive speech pattern, this story was doubly nostalgic for me.