Category Archives: short story

Stories of Suspense: Romantic and Otherwise

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Reading

Fiction River: Summer Sizzles

In her introduction to Fiction River‘s issue of romantic suspense stories, editor and romance writer Kristine Grayson (pen name of series editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch) says, “I love romantic suspense when it’s done right. When it’s done wrong, it’s seriously mind-numbing.” That must be the type I’d read previously. This issue has made a bit of a convert out of me—I just have to keep finding the good stuff, like these examples:

In Katie Pressa’s story “Night Moves,” a man hospitalized for a head injury that robbed him of his memory kicks into high gear when he’s attacked again. Where did those skills come from? He doesn’t know, but the detective sent to sort out the second attack and prevent another one believes she has a hero on her hands and wants to find out more.

The sparks of romance might be flying between a female helicopter pilot and a laconic Delta Force operator, but their mission in Afghanistan is too dangerous for distractions, in “Flying above the Hindu Kush” by ML Buchman. Super-exciting!

Sabrina Chase’s lighthearted “Need to Know” made me smile. If only real life served up such delicious surprises!

“Totality” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch takes place on the Oregon coast during 2018’s total eclipse and turns it into a tale about a woman whose mentally ill sister is trying to kill herself and the man who may save them both. Nice portrayal of coping with irrationality.

And many more . . .

Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

Much to like in the March-April 2020 issue! Especially to my taste were:  

The clever police procedural “The Eleventh Commandment” by Paul Charles. So nice to have villains who puts a little thought into their crimes.

Peter Lovesey’s “Lady Luck” is just downright malicious, staring with the ironic first line. Ha!

I’m a fan of John Lantigua’s stories set in Miami’s Little Havana. Like previous ones, “In the War Zone of the Heart” is not only a good story, he spices it up with local culture.

You can read Karr and Wehner’s Passport to Crime story “Here in Tremonia a Crime Fiction Slam . . .” as a long poem, one with a few murders along the way and a happy ending.

In John F. Dobbyn’s entertaining “A Little Help from my Friend,” finally, at last, a story protagonist comes to the aid of his author!

Dave Zeltzerman’s entertaining stories about his modern-day Nero Wolfe/Archie stand-ins Julius Katz and a rectangular bit of hi-grade AI are always fun, especially in “Like a Lightning Bolt,” written from a would-be con-man’s pov. He doesn’t stand a chance.

The polyglot protagonist of Edith Maxwell’s tale, “One Too Many,” discovers she’s just too clever for her own good!

Photo: Carlos Martinez, creative commons license

Crime Short Fiction: EQMM and Rock and a Hard Place

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magazines, reading

In the rambunctious arena from which mystery and crime short stories emerge, some publishers have played a long game, MVPs of that literary scene, some leave the game after a short run, and, though their retirement from the field is lamented, new players keep the game going. Here’s a take on one of those new pubs and recent offerings from a true stalwart.

***Rock and a Hard Place

The debut of another outlet for short crime fiction is something to celebrate. Editors Jay Butkowski, Jonathan Elliott, and Roger Nokes say they aim to capture the sense of desperation in our current moment. Though the 18 stories in their inaugural issue are about characters in desperate situations, at the bottom of the social heap, the editors believe these stories are compassionate and real. In going dark, they’re following the path of a good many other current crime magazine editors.

Stories I especially enjoyed included SJ Rozan’s funny “Sister of Mercy,” about a nun with an unusual and peculiarly useful side-job. Kathleen Kilpatrick’s “Ghost Tribe” about albino children in Tanzania raised interesting questions about identity and fitting in. For a clever jibe at Donald Trump’s Mexican wall, read Alex Skopic’s “Los Renacidos.”

In “Chlorine,” Al Tucher’s recurring character, the prostitute Diana, (wisely) decides against a replay of her teen years, and several memorable characters in SA Cosby’s “The Anchors That Tie Us Down” encounter a bit of the editors’ sought-after compassion. You’ll chuckle over the reversal of fortune faced by a pair of young grifters in Allan Leverone’s “A Town Full of Losers.” Finally, Jacqueline Seewald’s “Against the Odds” pits a gambler against his compulsions.

Not all of the stories appealed to me, and I abandoned one or two partway through. But that’s OK. The appetite for darkness isn’t the same for everyone or the same on every day. Independently published, Rock and a Hard Place is a notable first effort for a publication worth watching.

****Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

I see I’m falling behind in my reading, as this refers to the January/February 2020 issue of EQMM, and March/April beckons from the bookshelf beside me. This long-standing publication of crime and mystery tales (almost 80 years!) may be thriving in part because of the diversity of story types it includes—something good for every reader. Among this issue’s many fine stories are the following:

>“The Wretched Strangers” by Matthew Wilson employs a novel protagonist, a woman who interviews asylum-seekers and must untangle their complex relationships with the truth.
>Satisfying (and deadly) comeuppance tales in “Now Hiring Nasty Girlz” by Toni LP Kelner, “Crow’s Nest” by John M Floyd, and “Stroke of Luck” by Bill Pronzini. Floyd talks about how he created “Crow’s Nest” in a 15 Feb SleuthSayers post (scroll down for it).
>“The Concrete Pillow” by Pat Black–a gritty police procedural set in Glasgow.
>Excellent depiction of a child’s flawed recollections in “The Summer Uncle Cat Came to Stay” by Leslie Elman.

You can subscribe to EQMM or its sister publication Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine or find single copies in the magazine section of your big box book store.

Photo: cegoh for Pixabay, creative commons license

Spies X 3

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spy, espionage, reading

****Spy’s Fate

Overhearing someone talking about you can be both unsettling and revealing. Arnaldo Correa’s novel, full of observations about the US and its spycraft, from the point of view of a Cuban intelligence operative, is another such revelation. While there’s plenty of ineptitude and bureaucratic blindness on one side or the other, the main character, Carlos Manuel, is an expert at exposing and outwitting it. For a book about a Cuban spy stranded in Miami with a vindictive CIA agent on his trail, there’s quite a bit of humor and a heartwarming romance too. I really enjoyed this book. First published in 2002, it was Correa’s first novel translated into English. Available here from Amazon.

***Spies

This Fiction River special edition, edited by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, includes 15 short spy stories by a range of authors. If you think the short story form doesn’t provide enough space to explore the long con of espionage, these tales may change your mind. Rusch says that what links them, besides their topic, is “their willingness to look at the world in all its messiness,” without flinching from the corrosive effects of secrets on everyone involved. My favorites included two historicals—the clever and very British “Our Man in Basingstoke” by Sabrina Chase, set during World War II, and “The Message” by CA Rowland, set during the Civil War—and Ron Collins’s “The Spy Who Walked into the Cold,” set in racially divided Chicago a few decades back. Get it here.

****From the Shadows

Spies needn’t be government agents or involved with great sociopolitical questions. Spanish author Juan José Millás’s novel (translated by Thomas Bunstead and Daniel Hahn) barely escapes the bedroom. Damián Lobo, a youngish man down on his luck and out of work, entertains himself by carrying on pretend conversations with a famous talk show host. This fantasy so preoccupies him that, in a rash moment, he steals a tie pin he believes the tv star would like. The police chase him through an outdoor market and he ducks inside an old wardrobe on display. Before it seems safe to emerge, the wardrobe is trundled away, loaded onto a truck, and delivered to its new owners’ bedroom, with Lobo still inside. As it turns out, there’s never a good moment to climb out, and through an elaborate ruse, Lobo makes his home there, listening in on all the family’s intimate secrets. An amusing tale that Kirkus Reviews calls “spectacularly bizarre.” Millás has won numerous literary prizes; this short novel is his first published in North America. Loved it! Available from Amazon.

Photo: David Lytle, creative commons license

Snatching Summer Reading Time

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reading, beach

Planning a relaxing time at the shore, interspersed with a few (or more) restorative naps? You need a book! But not War and Peace, however strong your guilt that you’ve never read it. Perfect solution? Short stories. Three recent collections (plus two of mine).

****Exit Wounds, edited by Paul B. Kane and Marie O’Regan – The cover featuring names of some of today’s best-selling crime fiction authors—Lee Child, Val McDermid, Dean Koontz, Mark Billingham and more—signals good reading ahead. Highlights:

  • From the Department of Clever Twists comes Jeffrey Deaver’s story of the bullying of a suspect in a string of serial killings and Sarah Hilary’s The Pitcher, in which a journalist visits an obscure Spanish taverna and smacks into the unexpected.
  • The opening line of Fiona Cummins’s Dead Weight—“You’re not going to eat that, are you?”—says all you need to know about these mother-daughter duelists.
  • There’s an Edgar Allan Poe vibe to On the Anatomization of an Unknown Man (1637) by Dublin author John Connolly. Take My Hand by A K Benedict involves something Poe would have loved, a Hand of Glory. If you don’t know what that is, Google it. A sure-fire conversation-stopper.
  • Dennis Lehane seems to be channeling Raymond Chandler in this line from The Consumers: “When she let (her hair) fall naturally, with its tousled waves and anarchic curls, she looked like a wet dream sent to douse a five-alarm fire.”
  • In Paul Finch’s The New Lad, a brand new policeman is assigned to watch a crime scene overnight. Alone. Outside a derelict mental hospital. In the woods. Excruciating tension!

The Akashic collection ****Milwaukee Noir, edited by Tim Hennessy, reflects the challenges of a city undergoing a rocky transition away from heavy industry and the challenges and changes that result. As horror writer Peter Straub says about his home town (Millhaven in his books), “What happened to the Millhaven where a guy could go out for a beer an’ bratwurst without stumbling over a severed head?” The collection includes stories by Reed Farrel Coleman, and Nick Petrie, but they’re not the only reason to pick up this collection. Two of my favorites were:

  • Runoff by Valerie Laken. An adventuresome trio of teens exploring the pipes under the city finds the unexpected. Perfectly captures the equivocation and fearlessness of youth.
  • Transit Complaint Box by Frank Wheeler, Jr. A jaded transit security officer and his probationer ride the city’s bus routes, solving some problems, preventing others, and generally filling in for our tattered mental health system. Heartwarming and chilling, rewarding and dangerous in equal proportions.

**A Time for Violence: Stories with an Edge, edited by Andy Rausch and Chris Roy. If you want stories of murder and mayhem, this collection is for you. The editors’ intent was to inspire “edgy and transgressive” material. In this, they succeeded. One story, Rausch says, “is neither crime nor horror by standard definitions, and yet it’s the worst of both.” I couldn’t finish it. It wasn’t the only one. Past a certain point of gruesomeness, I lose interest.

Still, I chuckled at Santa at the Café by Joe R Lansdale, which proves, once again, there’s no honor among thieves. Max Allan Collins’s Guest Service: A Quarry Story demonstrates an ideal way to get rid of a troublesome spouse. Elements of a police procedural make Manner of Death: Homicide by Peter Leonard fun and funny too, with its inclusion of the kind of banter prevalent among fictional cops and ex-cops. And, I loved the promise of later hijinks in Andrew Nette’s Ladies Day at the Olympia Car Wash, when the clean-up of a glamorous gal’s trunk provides clues to homicide.

Murder, of course, and betrayals by friends and family run through the whole collection like the bass line of a death march. So, if you like your stories extra-dark, you’ll find much to like here.

* * *

After the foregoing, my two stories published in June only prove how vast is the crime/mystery/thriller terrain. They’re both in great company in their respective publications with other excellent stories:

  • In Who They Are Now, an aging sportscaster is murdered under cover of a Florida hurricane. Is someone after his priceless collection of baseball memorabilia? The Delray Beach police are on the case, with help from a no-longer-young Hollywood star. It’s one of 21 tales in The Best Laid Plans, edited by Judy Penz Sheluk.
  • New Energy describes how a young Japanese-American newspaper reporter in Sweetwater, Texas, investigates a friend’s murder. He was killed by a rattlesnake bite, 30 stories up in a wind turbine cabin. In the Jul-Aug issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, available at your local big box or mystery bookstore.

New In Print

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Release day! Today’s the day for the print version of the anthology, The Best Laid Plans, edited by Canadian mystery writer Judy Penz Sheluk. She’s collected 21 stories from popular short story writers, and if you like your crime and chills in small bites, you’ll enjoy this! Here’s a quick rundown of these entertaining tales.

About my story, “Who They Are Now”: When an aging sportscaster is murdered in his bed under cover of a vicious Florida hurricane, is someone after his priceless collection of baseball memorabilia? The Delray Beach police are on the case, aided by his neighbor, a feisty but no-longer-young Hollywood star.

Order here from Amazon.

Short Crime Fiction – March Hare Edition

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For a recent Chicago jaunt, my suitcase held short story magazines not getting read in the flurry of daily life. Since the temperature in my daughter’s house was 63 degrees (the furnace repair man threw in the towel and refused to charge anything), my preferred keep-warm strategy was to wrap myself in a comforter with a cup of ginger tea and catch up with what’s hot between the covers of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Mystery Tribune.

Ellery Queen (Nov/Dec 2018)

This issue is a perfect example of the diversity of story types the mystery/crime genre embraces, everything from the echoes of Raymond Chandler and his P.I.’s in Bill Pronzini’s “Smoke Screen,” to John H. Dirckx’s nifty police procedural, “Where the Red Lines Meet,” which every real estate agent should read. Ditto “Open House,” by Reed Johnson.

O.A.Tynan’s “Jenny’s Necklace” and Jehane Sharah’s debut story “The Screening” show people haunted by deaths that took place long ago. The future of crime prevention is secure too, as a couple of feisty kids help resolve some bad situations in Anna Scotti’s entertaining “Krikon the Ghoul Hunter” and Michael Sears’s “The Honest End of Sybil Cooper.”

“Bug Appetit’ by Barb Goffman, nominated for an Agatha Award, offers the author’s trademark comeuppance for characters too clever for their own good! (If you’ve read Barb’s story, you appreciate the Asian insect buffet in the photo. And, if you haven’t, you’ve got a pretty good guess about the connection right now.)

Mystery Tribune (Fall 2018) – Kindle edition available online

I love the mix of stories, essays and photo galleries that make this magazine unique. Naturally, you know you’ll get a good story from Reed Farrel Coleman, who leads off this issue with “The Devil Always Knows.” Joe De Quattro’s “Still Life with Stalin” was one of my favorites here, as were the photos by Philip Kanwischer.

Ellery Queen – March/April 2019 – Kindle edition available online

I looked high and low for the Jan/Feb issue, because I wanted to read Art Taylor’s award-nominated story, “English 398: Fiction Workshop,” but that issue is buried somewhere. A pleasure to look forward to. This current issue nevertheless contains some gems.

“Life and Death in T-Shirts” by British author Liza Cody was fun, as was Susan Dunlap’s tables-turning “Aunt Jenna Was a Spy.” Paul D. Marks’s “Fade Out on Bunker Hill” and Robert S. Levinson’s “All About Evie” prove once again that Hollywood is the gift to mystery-writers that keeps on giving. Even though I saw what was coming, I especially enjoyed the Peruvian connection in John Lantigua’s “The Revenge of the Puma.” More great tales than I have room for here!

****Amsterdam Noir

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Edited by René Appel and Josh Pachter – Fourteen of The Netherlands’ premier authors of crime and literary fiction contributed stories to this collection, with the editors—top-rated crime authors themselves—providing the fifteenth. Amsterdam Noir is the latest in Akashic Books’ long-running series of place-based crime anthologies.

If this enterprise is in part intended to impart a vision of the locale and its residents through the lens of crime, this collection is another success.

Whenever a story purports to represent a certain place, you can fairly ask yourself, could these events have unfolded this way anywhere else? Geography, history, and culture all affect what can and does take place in a city and the official and unofficial reactions to events.

Appel and Pachter assigned the stories to four broad headings inspired by classic film noir, and below I briefly describe a story or two under each of their headings. The collection includes both well established authors, like Theo Capel, and writers new to the scene, like Karin Amatmoekrim. Meet some of the very best Dutch crime writers, right here in these pages.

Out of the Past

Welcome to Amsterdam by Michael Berg is a story of revenge—a revenge the wronged man never thought he could achieve. It’s pretty strong stuff. Berg was the 2013 winner of the Golden Noose, the award for the best Dutch-language crime novel of the year. Herman Koch, who wrote 2013’s best-selling crime novel, The Dinner, contributed Ankle Monitor, which launches with a brilliant first line: “Maybe it was a mistake to go back to my old neighborhood on the very first day of a weekend leave.” No stopping reading there.

Kiss Me Deadly

All three of these stories are about ill-conceived love and all are written by women, interestingly. Silent Days by Karin Amatmoekrim proves that just because a woman is old and alone doesn’t mean she is helpless.

Touch of Evil

Here you have Satan himself, a pedophile, an alcoholic fratricide, and a man channelling Ted Bundy (for an international touch), plus a hard-working police detective who unexpectedly comes out on top in Theo Capel’s entertaining Lucky Sevens.

They Live By Night

Echoing that film’s theme of inescapable tragedy, most of these stories are from the victim’s point of view, but Abdelkader Benali’s The Girl at the End of the Line is told through the eyes of a Moroccan police officer assigned to find the killer of a Muslim girl. Winner of a top literary prize, Benali opens this story, “A farmer found her with her head facing southeast, toward Mecca, as if in prayer.” It’s an effective reminder of the pluralistic culture of Western European cities today and a strong intimation of the layers of social complexity the story will probe.

30-Second Book Reviews

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****The Death of Mrs. Westaway

By Ruth Ware – It was a big house, with big grounds, supervised by a noisy tiding of magpies. Harriet Westaway, barely eking a living as a psychic advisor on the Brighton Pier, receives a letter from faraway Penzance inviting her to the funeral and will-reading of her grandmother, the wealthy Hester Westaway. Trouble is, her grandparents are all dead.

Curiosity wins out and she shows up for the event. What starts as something she could explain as a misunderstanding draws her in deeper and deeper, and the search for her real family takes off. Liked it. The Death of Mrs. Westaway

****The Bolivian Sailor

By Donald Dewey – Sometimes a book arrives unexpectedly in the mailbox, or “over the transom,” as publishers used to say, as this one did. To my delight, there were many things to like about this book. Poor P.I. Paul Finley finds himself enmeshed in a deadly plot when a Bolivian seaman is murdered in a seedy motel. He keeps his sense of humor, though, if not his part-time gig teaching a college course in Practical Problems in Law Enforcement. Alas, quite a few of those problems are playing out in front of him. Fun! The Bolivian Sailor

***Low Down Dirty Vote

Edited by Mysti Berry – A timely collection of eleven crime and mystery stories on the theme of fighting voter suppression. Women, blacks, the elderly—in these stories, various groups are discouraged from voting because of presumptions about how they’ll cast their ballots. Most unexpected and amusing use of the vote appeared in Catronia McPherson’s tale about the comeuppance of a man in a crowded commuter train. Good job, all! Low Down Dirty Vote

***A Deadly Indifference

By Marshall Jevons – Harvard economics professor Henry Spearman travels to Cambridge, England, to help a friend wanting to buy the former home of economist Alfred Marshall and establish a foundation there. Marshall may be dear to some economic theorists, including Spearman, but the university faculty is dominated by leftists opposing Marshall’s legacy. Soon, intellectual sparring is replaced by violence and murder. Spearman engagingly calls on economics theory (sometimes a lot of it) to explain these events. Secondary characters, not required to trot out their supply-and-demand curves, are nicely drawn too. A Deadly Indifference

Magpie photo: AdinaVoicu, creative commons license

Notes from the Dark Side

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raven

Here’s news I like to hear from an anthology editor.

Wrote Lyn Worthen, “I am proud to announce that Quoth the Raven, which was recently named the Best Anthology of 2018 by the Critters Workshop/Preditors and Editors Annual Reader’s Poll, is now on the 2018 Bram Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot.”

In Quoth the Raven, poets and short story authors tell a contemporary tale, riffing on the style and sensibility of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe’s “Berenice” inspired my story, “Tooth and Nail,” and now some of my family members hesitate to be in a room alone with me . . . Nevertheless.

Why Dark Fiction?

My fellow QtR author, Tiffany Michelle Brown interviewed several of the collection’s 32 authors on why they are attracted to dark fiction. “Why do you think we like to read about the things that terrify us?” she asked.

Emerian Rich, author of the story “My Annabel” says, “Horror addicts like to be scared in a safe, non-harmful way. Creep me out, test my limits, push me over the edge as long as in reality I am safe in my warm bed, able to switch on the light and see the monsters are just in my head.”

Can this predilection be traced to the fight or flight instincts developed over millennia? Susan McCAuley, author of “The Cask,” thinks so. Our world today is relatively safe, she says, and “going to scary movies, reading scary stories, and going on scary rides, helps fulfill a part of us that isn’t being used very often, at least in countries where all our major survival needs are met.”

Her theory may get some support from Donea Lee Weaver, author of “The Ca(t)sualty,” who admits that, for her, the attraction of dark fiction is “the adrenalin rush.” She says she may be covering her eyes, “but I’m still peeking through my fingers, because I just have to know what happens next.”

The stories that Sonora Taylor, author of “Hearts are Just ‘Likes’” says she’s most drawn to aren’t just about a dark force, but how someone’s responding to that darkness” and is possibly unhinged by it. Understandably, the Poe work that inspired her story was “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

My own answer to Tiffany’s question is that “sometimes reading about—exposing oneself to—supremely terrifying things makes it easier to deal with the fearful events encountered in everyday life. Some experts suggest this accounts for the popularity among women of a certain kind of thriller. Reading about sexual violence helps readers contemplate not just the terror of such an event, but also its survivability. Maybe.”

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Raven artwork by rebeccarawrr, creative commons license.

Resurrection on the Cutting-Room Floor

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scissors, blood, editing
(photo: Guzmán Lozano, creative commons license)

The first draft of one of my novels was 135,000 words—1.5 times what was remotely saleable. Since I didn’t plan on writing solely for myself, I couldn’t risk being thrown in the circular file before my doorstop even reach an editor’s desk! So I began to cut. In the many subsequent drafts and rewrites, I’ve always had one eye on shrinkability.

When my editor—the stellar Barb Goffman—suggested I beef the novel up in some areas, I knew we weren’t just talking addition, we were talking subtraction too. A number of characters were easy to jettison altogether, but a few that had to be trimmed still spoke to me. The three most promising I’ve turned into published short stories, something J. Todd Scott may have done with a character from High White Sun (a short story in, I believe, Mystery Tribune).

One character I didn’t want to lose is a murdered Roman priest who thinks his classic migraines are communications from God. Although his death remains in the novel, his backstory is repurposed in “The Penitent,” published last year in Bouchercon’s Passport to Murder.

A mafia fence launched his career by masterminding the 1990 Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist in Boston, a resume-enhancing crime unrelated to events in the novel. That story became “Above Suspicion,” appearing in the current issue (#26) of Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine.

Another priest, Anglican flavor this time, intervenes in an assault on my protagonist, no doubt saving her life. While this priest has only a minor role in the novel, his giddy nonstop talking charmed my beta- (or perhaps I should say gamma-) readers, and I worked him into a story—“What Saved Them”—published in the U.S. 1 Summer Fiction issue.

The transformation from novel excerpt to complete short story turned out not to be as easy as I expected, and each presented its own challenges. If you’re ever tempted to resurrect one of the darlings you’ve just killed, here’s what I learned.

Four Tips for Authors

1. If the characters involved in the short story remain in your novel (that is, if you haven’t gotten rid of them altogether), you need an eagle eye for continuity. You can’t have your character driving a Porsche in the story and relying on Uber in the story. More important, they cannot do anything in the story that would affect the action of the novel.

2. Originally, I’d engaged in vigorous head-hopping in the scene where the priest dies. I found I could park the novel’s point of view in the head of the assassin, yet write the short story from the priest’s perspective. Same events, two points of view. That was fun.

3. The story of the fence had a strong core from the get-go because of the extensive detail about the ISG theft. I wrote new backstory—waybackstory—about the character’s childhood in Fez. And of course more extensive setup and denouement.

4. OK, it’s fun, but is it a story? The Anglican priest was a character. His story had to be developed from scratch using the dialog I’d salvaged. But who was he? How would he behave? What changed for him? The rescue of the woman would plausibly have a long-term impact on him and it became a source of reflection, laying the groundwork for his subsequent actions.

Because you don’t have a blank page when you deal with bits excised from other works, there are many more than the customary limits on your degrees of authorial freedom. Whether the resurrected short stories prove useful in marketing or whether they are just good stories in their own right, you can feel good about creative recycling!