{"id":10884,"date":"2024-03-12T08:11:13","date_gmt":"2024-03-12T12:11:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10884"},"modified":"2024-03-12T08:11:13","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T12:11:13","slug":"eqmm-march-april-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10884","title":{"rendered":"EQMM – March\/April 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A great plot keeps you reading, compelling characters make you care. But in my case it\u2019s the love of words that brings a smile to my face. Authors using them in clever new ways. Painting indelible pictures with them. Hinting to me that they love the language as much as I do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The short stories in the current issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine<\/a> show once again that mystery writers can be just as expert at manipulating the English language as their more literary cousins. So many excellent stories in terms of the plot\/character\/setting basics, plus a couple whose deft prose grabbed my attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, let me mention Bill Pronzini\u2019s story, \u201cThe Finger,\u201d because it has an affinity with this theme. His character is a successful and prolific writer of international suspense novels who has been known to crank out a 100,000-word thriller in just five weeks. Clearly, this man writes at a devilish speed, aided by superb touch typing skills. When an infection causes him to lose the little finger of his right hand, his typing speed plummets and, worse, the cascade of ideas that propelled that lightning pace has dried up too. Instead, Pronzini writes, \u201cthe innovative similes and metaphors that were the hallmarks of his work came less easily and tended to be trite instead of original. The prose stuttered and bumbled.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this collection, there are several examples of \u201cinnovative similes and metaphors\u201d that this nine-fingered author could have been justly proud of, in my opinion, and no stuttering and bumbling. Here are three examples I especially admired:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Nils Gilbertson\u2019s unsentimental story \u201cApple Juice,\u201d he describes this scene: \u201cBy the time he reached the barn, night had turned to early morn and sun shone through bare trees, their branches like petrified veins against the cornflower sky.\u201d Petrified veins. I look at my hands and see that instantly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The EQMM Department of First Stories offers \u201cMurder Under Sedation\u201d by Lawrence Ong, and though this is his first detective story in EQMM, he rips off a clever putdown of every dreary dental waiting room everywhere: \u201cI scanned the magazines on the rack to count how many are still in print before turning my attention to the waiting room\u2019s other occupant.\u201d I laughed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTurnabout\u201d by Sheila Kohler contains a short passage, a model of subtlety, that conveys more meaning than some entire novels. The narrator and her longtime friend Jane walk into Jane\u2019s husband\u2019s study, where he and another visitor, Sergei, sit in armchairs opposite each other, smoking and not speaking. \u201cIt was something about the silence, I think, that spoke so clearly to me, or perhaps the way they were looking at one another, something in the brown-green and the blue-grey eyes which, young though I was, I recognized. I looked at Jane. Did she, smart girl that she was, understand what was going on?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Great job, one and all!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A great plot keeps you reading, compelling characters make you care. But in my case it\u2019s the love of words that brings a smile to my face. Authors using them in clever new ways. Painting indelible pictures with them. Hinting … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Sometimes, in writing prose, it\u2019s the little things that count the most. Here are small moments from the current issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine that have more power than a bomb going off! ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,3,126,120],"tags":[610],"class_list":["post-10884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-mystery","category-reading-2","category-short-story","tag-ellery-queen-mystery-magazine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Py","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10884"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10886,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10884\/revisions\/10886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}