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Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine March/April 2020
Fiction
"The Eleventh Commandment" Paul Charles
"Run Rosie Run" Preston Lang
"Lady Luck" Peter Lovesey
"In the War Zone of the Heart" John Lantigua
"Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats" Amy Myers
"Bones" Bill Pronzini
"A Little Help from My Friend" John Dobbyn
"Kidneys" Rebecca Cantrell
"Ghost Cat" Hal Charles
"Active Shooter" Jack Bunker
"Final Thoughts" Susan Salzer
"Like a Lightning Bolt" Dave Zeltserman
"One Too Many" Edith Maxwell
"Cardiff, by the Sea" Joyce Carol Oates
"Here in Tremonia" Karr & Wehner
"Ding Dong Bell" Ariel Dodson
"The Eleventh Commandment" Paul Charles
"Run Rosie Run" Preston Lang
"Lady Luck" Peter Lovesey
"In the War Zone of the Heart" John Lantigua
"Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats" Amy Myers
"Bones" Bill Pronzini
"A Little Help from My Friend" John Dobbyn
"Kidneys" Rebecca Cantrell
"Ghost Cat" Hal Charles
"Active Shooter" Jack Bunker
"Final Thoughts" Susan Salzer
"Like a Lightning Bolt" Dave Zeltserman
"One Too Many" Edith Maxwell
"Cardiff, by the Sea" Joyce Carol Oates
"Here in Tremonia" Karr & Wehner
"Ding Dong Bell" Ariel Dodson
192 pages, Unknown Binding
First published March 1, 2020
About the author
Janet Hutchings
241 books16 followersEllery Queen's Mystery Magazine editor 1991-present.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 16, 2020
CONTENTS
◼️Fiction:
▪️"The Eleventh Commandment" - Paul Charles
▪️"Run Rosie Run" - Preston Lang
▪️"Lady Luck" - Peter Lovesey
▪️"In the War Zone of the Heart" - John Lantigua
▪️"Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats" - Amy Myers
▪️"Bones" - Bill Pronzini
▪️"Here in Tremonia" - [Hanns-Peter] Karr & [Walter] Wehner [Passport to Crime]
▪️"A Little Help From My Friend" - John F. Dobbyn
▪️"Kidneys" - Rebecca Cantrell
▪️"Ghost Cat" - Hal Charles [pseudonym for Hal Blythe & Charlie Sweet]
▪️"Active Shooter" - Jack Bunker
▪️"Final Thoughts" - Susan Salzer
▪️"Like a Lightning Bolt" - Dave Zeltserman
▪️"Ding Dong Bell" - Ariel Dodson [Department of First Stories]
▪️"One Too Many" - Edith Maxwell
▪️"Cardiff, by the Sea" - Joyce Carol Oates
◼️Poetry:
▪️"Of Clues and Clerihews" - Richard Stout
◼️Reviews:
▪️"The Jury Box" - Steve Steinbock
▪️"Blog Bytes" - Kristopher Zgorski
There are sixteen stories as well as some other material in this issue. One of those stories accounts for a third of the magazine; that is the one I will discuss last.
"Ding Dong Bell" is the "first paid professional fiction publication" by Ariel Dodson. This is not a mystery, but a horror story. A young girl has been given up by her divorcing parents, neither of whom wanted custody of their daughter. She has been taken in by an aunt and uncle, who have a daughter of their own, a sweet, beautiful child, beloved by all. Virginia, the abandoned daughter, is neither sweet nor beautiful; she hates her near-perfect cousin.
Strange things happen at the school they attend. Some children have vanished. A pack of bullies terrorizes their classmates. And one girl is so shiningly wonderful that even the ever-bitter Virginia adores her. Virginia comes to depend on that girl's help.
I think that this is one of the best-written stories in this issue. That does not mean that I like it, though. I rarely like horror stories, particularly when they involve children, and this one is not an exception. I suspect that many other readers will appreciate it much more than I do.
Each issue of EQMM now has a "Passport to Crime" entry, a story originally written in a language other than English. In this issue, that story is "Here in Tremonia," written by Hanns-Peter Karr and Walter Wehner and translated from German to English by Mary Tannert. For some reason, this story is not given an introduction; a note at the end of the tale says that it won "Germany's 2018 Glauser Award for Best Short Story."
This is also a sort of horror story. Tremonia is a community of miners and factory workers who are facing having to be moved to make room for a new gated community of condominiums. But if they keep killing everyone who is planning the project...
This is written in a strange, stylized manner, with sentences broken up oddly. In the following example, I am using the symbol ¶ to indicate an indentation for a new paragraph:
¶And the man with the briefcase says: You guys from the band, don't you want to play at the groundbreaking ceremony
¶soon,
¶when all the permits are in
¶for the new settlement,
¶here in the ghetto?
The phrase "in the ghetto" appears as a refrain through the story, some times specifically referring to the Elvis Presley song of that title, but more often just referring to the poor neighborhood in which the story is set. But I wonder if this phrase is used in this manner in the German version of the story. In Germany, "the ghetto" would not, I believe, be likely to conjure an association with a poor neighborhood in which people of color live. I suspect that it would it would more often bring thoughts of the Jewish ghettos targeted for extermination by Nazis. These were not communities that people would have killed to remain in, except that being removed from those actual ghettos meant facing horrible deaths. This totally ruined this story for me.
Perhaps the poorest story in this issue (and unquestionably the poorest title) is "Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats" by Amy Myers. Didier is a French chef working in Victorian England in this series. Didier frequently assists the English police, usually in matters in which he would have some expertise. In this story, though, the police have received a confession of murder by a man who has refused to give any further details. They have had to release the man, who gave them a false address. The only clue the police have is a business card from a hat shop that the released man had been carrying. The officer asking for Didier's help says, "I can't put my team on it, but you might like to sniff around, Auguste." And why can the police themselves not investigate? Solely, as far as I can tell, because there would be no Didier story then.
The mysterious hat shop in question, run by a man known as the "Mad Hatter," is not only an emporium, it also houses "the Museum of Joyful Hats" and its more sinister division, "Abel's Room," in which all the hats displayed memorialize owners who might - or might not - have been murdered. The reader is given details of the deaths of four of these folks, any of which might be relevant to the case.
"Ghost Cat" by Hal Charles, a pseudonym for authors Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet, is a vastly better story, but it is also badly flawed. A wealthy man whose son is planning to be married over the strong objections of the father is found dead, seemingly killed by a mountain lion. But are there still mountain lions living in Kentucky? Some of the solution to the mystery is fine, but the "how" part is absurdly obvious.
If the reader used to watch a certain television show, the last line of the brief tale "Final Thoughts" by Susan Salzer should also be obvious; to folks who did not watch that show, it will be meaningless. A married woman having an affair decides to take action to make her lover leave his own wife for her. This is one of the better stories in this issue.
In "Active Shooter" by Jack Bunker, the narration seems to be the dying thoughts of a man visiting the high school in which he used to teach. He recognizes the sheriff's deputy who shot him, and he thinks about his life and his perhaps approaching death. No mystery here, just a portrait of a man who may be dying.
John F. Dobbyn's tale "A Little Help From My Friend" is another story with a shooting victim thinking that he may be dying. But this shooting victim is the author of a series of stories about a detective, who seems to come to help him. I think that the crime that the author in the story found out about that led to his shooting is most unlikely.
"Run Rosie Run" by Preston Lang and "Bones" by Bill Pronzini give opposing views of the workings of conscience following murders. In "Bones," the unearthed skeleton of a girl who disappeared nearly twenty years earlier fills the thoughts of the narrator, who has been tormented since the girl's death. As I would expect from Pronzini, this is a good story.
"Run Rosie Run" is the tale of a long-distance runner whose recovery from a near-fatal injury is an inspiration to many. When a blackmailer threatens to damage the runner's reputation, she takes action. This may be understandable, but I think the moral issues raised should have been given more attention.
Paul Charles's story "The Eleventh Commandment" is a genuine whodunit, a police procedural in a series featuring British Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy. A man is found strangled, evidently by someone using some instrument with a smooth surface. The deceased man's wife's boyfriend seems an obvious suspect, but he has an excellent alibi. The ending is a bit too complex to be entirely believable.
"Kidneys" by Rebecca Cantrell is another traditional mystery, but the police are not the ones solving this. A woman is arrested for the murder of her mother-in-law, but a friend of her lawyer puts together some little-known facts in the daughter-in-law's defense. This hearkens back to the kind of 1930s mysteries in which some obscure knowledge is used to solve the case.
The introduction to Dave Zeltserman's tale "Like a Lightning Bolt" says that this story "belongs to a category in between" Zeltserman's "Julius Katz and Archie whodunits as well as his darker thrillers." That is a little misleading, but not inaccurate. A man instantly comes up with an ingenious plan that could get him a 241 million dollar lottery prize; all he has to do is commit one murder. The plan really is ingenious, but could easily have gone wrong in a way never considered in the story. The story presents a very nice variation on a familiar Zeltserman theme.
"In the War Zone of the Heart" by John Lantigua is an entry in Lantigua's series about Miami private Willie Cuesta. Cuesta is hired to intervene in a dispute between twin brothers from Nicaragua who have never gotten along. Now word has come that a brother who still lives in Nicaragua is coming to Florida to kill the other brother, who had married the former girlfriend of the brother who is on his way. Cuesta resolves the situation, but I wish that the brother coming to kill and the brother seeking to defend himself were not obviously regarded as being equally culpable.
"Lady Luck" by Peter Lovesey and "One Too Many" by Edith Maxwell are both about career criminals whose luck runs out. In "Lady Luck," a man living on a combination of "state handouts and burglary" wins a trip to Marrakesh. A professional burglar naturally wants to keep his hand in, even when on vacation, so he breaks into a home, and finds a woman in need of help. Things do not go as planned.
The criminal in "One Too Many" is a young woman who in addition to crime works at the Post Office, where she makes use of "those lovely yellow Authorization to Hold Mail forms people filled out." She has another outstanding ability; she is a hyperpolyglot. "I collect languages like other people collect sea glass or signed baseballs. I speak eleven languages fluently and get along just fine in another twelve." One of the languages that she knows is Zarma, a language spoken in Niger. This comes in handy when she overhears a conversation between two men speaking Zarma, saying that one of them found fifty thousand dollars left in the Uber vehicle he drove and has hidden it in their apartment. She follows the men and steals the money. This also does not go smoothly. This is a nice story with a remarkable lack of morality.
As a side note, "One Too Many," "Like a Lightning Bolt," and "A Little Help From My Friend" all take place in or around Boston, the city in which I live, which seems to be the criminous center of the United States. I think I should be planning a heist instead of writing a review.
I began my discussion of these stories with a horror story about a girl being brought up by people who were not her biological parents, and I will conclude with one as well. In "Cardiff, by the Sea" by Joyce Carol Oates, the central character, Clare, is no longer a child, though. She is an adult, working in academia in Pennsylvania, where she is a post-doctoral fellow, studying nineteenth-century photography. She was brought up in Minnesota, raised by parents who adopted her when she was a two-year-old. She has no conscious memories of her life before that.
Clare is contacted by a lawyer telling her that she has been left an inheritance by her grandmother, her father's mother, in the town of Cardiff, Maine. Clare goes to Maine and is greeted by two peculiar great-aunts, who bicker constantly. Clare stays with them and their nephew, her father's brother. She sees these people as sinister; indeed, she suspects her aunts might be poisoning her. And yet, she continues staying with them.
Clare finds that the rest of her immediate family had all died violently. Newspaper accounts say that her young brother and sister and her mother had all been shot dead by her father, who had then killed himself. Clare had been found hiding in a spider-web filled cabinet under a sink.
Clare comes to suspect that her father was not the killer and wants to expose the actual murderer.
Much of the story is intentionally strange. Clare's aunts' conversations are bizarre, the lawyer is oddly unhelpful, her uncle is uncommunicative. She faints, for the first time in her life. She feels that she is in danger, but does not try to avoid it. And the very end of the story changes - perhaps - what has gone before.
Oates is a celebrated author whose work I have often liked. I do not like this story. But then, as I said earlier, I rarely like horror stories.
In addition to the fiction, there are three brief poems, titled together as "Of Clues and Clerihews." These are by Richard Stout, following the example of mystery writer E. C. Bentley. Bentley's middle initial evidently stood for "Clerihew." The poems are "humorously biographical, two couplet" verses.
Kristopher Zgorski's "Blog Bytes" feature includes praise of four mystery blogs.
The book review column, "The Jury Box" by Steve Steinbock, awards four (out of a possible five) stars to six novels, one of which is Hid from Our Eyes by Julia Spencer-Fleming. I agree with Steinbock's reference to this as a "long-awaited" entry in this series, set in upstate New York. Steinbock gives a full five stars each to The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas and Pretty As a Picture by Elizabeth Little. He includes some shorter, unrated reviews as well.
There are not very good illustrations by Jason C. Eckhardt and Mark Evan Walker. I rather like the cover by Jennifer Dionisio, showing a young woman who reminds me of a less-pretty version of the actress Jeanne Crain.
I don't think any of the fiction in this issue is especially good, with the possible exception of "Ding Dong Bell." I do like the stories by Pronzini and Maxwell, but on the whole, I think this is an undistinguished issue.
◼️Fiction:
▪️"The Eleventh Commandment" - Paul Charles
▪️"Run Rosie Run" - Preston Lang
▪️"Lady Luck" - Peter Lovesey
▪️"In the War Zone of the Heart" - John Lantigua
▪️"Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats" - Amy Myers
▪️"Bones" - Bill Pronzini
▪️"Here in Tremonia" - [Hanns-Peter] Karr & [Walter] Wehner [Passport to Crime]
▪️"A Little Help From My Friend" - John F. Dobbyn
▪️"Kidneys" - Rebecca Cantrell
▪️"Ghost Cat" - Hal Charles [pseudonym for Hal Blythe & Charlie Sweet]
▪️"Active Shooter" - Jack Bunker
▪️"Final Thoughts" - Susan Salzer
▪️"Like a Lightning Bolt" - Dave Zeltserman
▪️"Ding Dong Bell" - Ariel Dodson [Department of First Stories]
▪️"One Too Many" - Edith Maxwell
▪️"Cardiff, by the Sea" - Joyce Carol Oates
◼️Poetry:
▪️"Of Clues and Clerihews" - Richard Stout
◼️Reviews:
▪️"The Jury Box" - Steve Steinbock
▪️"Blog Bytes" - Kristopher Zgorski
There are sixteen stories as well as some other material in this issue. One of those stories accounts for a third of the magazine; that is the one I will discuss last.
"Ding Dong Bell" is the "first paid professional fiction publication" by Ariel Dodson. This is not a mystery, but a horror story. A young girl has been given up by her divorcing parents, neither of whom wanted custody of their daughter. She has been taken in by an aunt and uncle, who have a daughter of their own, a sweet, beautiful child, beloved by all. Virginia, the abandoned daughter, is neither sweet nor beautiful; she hates her near-perfect cousin.
Strange things happen at the school they attend. Some children have vanished. A pack of bullies terrorizes their classmates. And one girl is so shiningly wonderful that even the ever-bitter Virginia adores her. Virginia comes to depend on that girl's help.
I think that this is one of the best-written stories in this issue. That does not mean that I like it, though. I rarely like horror stories, particularly when they involve children, and this one is not an exception. I suspect that many other readers will appreciate it much more than I do.
Each issue of EQMM now has a "Passport to Crime" entry, a story originally written in a language other than English. In this issue, that story is "Here in Tremonia," written by Hanns-Peter Karr and Walter Wehner and translated from German to English by Mary Tannert. For some reason, this story is not given an introduction; a note at the end of the tale says that it won "Germany's 2018 Glauser Award for Best Short Story."
This is also a sort of horror story. Tremonia is a community of miners and factory workers who are facing having to be moved to make room for a new gated community of condominiums. But if they keep killing everyone who is planning the project...
This is written in a strange, stylized manner, with sentences broken up oddly. In the following example, I am using the symbol ¶ to indicate an indentation for a new paragraph:
¶And the man with the briefcase says: You guys from the band, don't you want to play at the groundbreaking ceremony
¶soon,
¶when all the permits are in
¶for the new settlement,
¶here in the ghetto?
The phrase "in the ghetto" appears as a refrain through the story, some times specifically referring to the Elvis Presley song of that title, but more often just referring to the poor neighborhood in which the story is set. But I wonder if this phrase is used in this manner in the German version of the story. In Germany, "the ghetto" would not, I believe, be likely to conjure an association with a poor neighborhood in which people of color live. I suspect that it would it would more often bring thoughts of the Jewish ghettos targeted for extermination by Nazis. These were not communities that people would have killed to remain in, except that being removed from those actual ghettos meant facing horrible deaths. This totally ruined this story for me.
Perhaps the poorest story in this issue (and unquestionably the poorest title) is "Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats" by Amy Myers. Didier is a French chef working in Victorian England in this series. Didier frequently assists the English police, usually in matters in which he would have some expertise. In this story, though, the police have received a confession of murder by a man who has refused to give any further details. They have had to release the man, who gave them a false address. The only clue the police have is a business card from a hat shop that the released man had been carrying. The officer asking for Didier's help says, "I can't put my team on it, but you might like to sniff around, Auguste." And why can the police themselves not investigate? Solely, as far as I can tell, because there would be no Didier story then.
The mysterious hat shop in question, run by a man known as the "Mad Hatter," is not only an emporium, it also houses "the Museum of Joyful Hats" and its more sinister division, "Abel's Room," in which all the hats displayed memorialize owners who might - or might not - have been murdered. The reader is given details of the deaths of four of these folks, any of which might be relevant to the case.
"Ghost Cat" by Hal Charles, a pseudonym for authors Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet, is a vastly better story, but it is also badly flawed. A wealthy man whose son is planning to be married over the strong objections of the father is found dead, seemingly killed by a mountain lion. But are there still mountain lions living in Kentucky? Some of the solution to the mystery is fine, but the "how" part is absurdly obvious.
If the reader used to watch a certain television show, the last line of the brief tale "Final Thoughts" by Susan Salzer should also be obvious; to folks who did not watch that show, it will be meaningless. A married woman having an affair decides to take action to make her lover leave his own wife for her. This is one of the better stories in this issue.
In "Active Shooter" by Jack Bunker, the narration seems to be the dying thoughts of a man visiting the high school in which he used to teach. He recognizes the sheriff's deputy who shot him, and he thinks about his life and his perhaps approaching death. No mystery here, just a portrait of a man who may be dying.
John F. Dobbyn's tale "A Little Help From My Friend" is another story with a shooting victim thinking that he may be dying. But this shooting victim is the author of a series of stories about a detective, who seems to come to help him. I think that the crime that the author in the story found out about that led to his shooting is most unlikely.
"Run Rosie Run" by Preston Lang and "Bones" by Bill Pronzini give opposing views of the workings of conscience following murders. In "Bones," the unearthed skeleton of a girl who disappeared nearly twenty years earlier fills the thoughts of the narrator, who has been tormented since the girl's death. As I would expect from Pronzini, this is a good story.
"Run Rosie Run" is the tale of a long-distance runner whose recovery from a near-fatal injury is an inspiration to many. When a blackmailer threatens to damage the runner's reputation, she takes action. This may be understandable, but I think the moral issues raised should have been given more attention.
Paul Charles's story "The Eleventh Commandment" is a genuine whodunit, a police procedural in a series featuring British Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy. A man is found strangled, evidently by someone using some instrument with a smooth surface. The deceased man's wife's boyfriend seems an obvious suspect, but he has an excellent alibi. The ending is a bit too complex to be entirely believable.
"Kidneys" by Rebecca Cantrell is another traditional mystery, but the police are not the ones solving this. A woman is arrested for the murder of her mother-in-law, but a friend of her lawyer puts together some little-known facts in the daughter-in-law's defense. This hearkens back to the kind of 1930s mysteries in which some obscure knowledge is used to solve the case.
The introduction to Dave Zeltserman's tale "Like a Lightning Bolt" says that this story "belongs to a category in between" Zeltserman's "Julius Katz and Archie whodunits as well as his darker thrillers." That is a little misleading, but not inaccurate. A man instantly comes up with an ingenious plan that could get him a 241 million dollar lottery prize; all he has to do is commit one murder. The plan really is ingenious, but could easily have gone wrong in a way never considered in the story. The story presents a very nice variation on a familiar Zeltserman theme.
"In the War Zone of the Heart" by John Lantigua is an entry in Lantigua's series about Miami private Willie Cuesta. Cuesta is hired to intervene in a dispute between twin brothers from Nicaragua who have never gotten along. Now word has come that a brother who still lives in Nicaragua is coming to Florida to kill the other brother, who had married the former girlfriend of the brother who is on his way. Cuesta resolves the situation, but I wish that the brother coming to kill and the brother seeking to defend himself were not obviously regarded as being equally culpable.
"Lady Luck" by Peter Lovesey and "One Too Many" by Edith Maxwell are both about career criminals whose luck runs out. In "Lady Luck," a man living on a combination of "state handouts and burglary" wins a trip to Marrakesh. A professional burglar naturally wants to keep his hand in, even when on vacation, so he breaks into a home, and finds a woman in need of help. Things do not go as planned.
The criminal in "One Too Many" is a young woman who in addition to crime works at the Post Office, where she makes use of "those lovely yellow Authorization to Hold Mail forms people filled out." She has another outstanding ability; she is a hyperpolyglot. "I collect languages like other people collect sea glass or signed baseballs. I speak eleven languages fluently and get along just fine in another twelve." One of the languages that she knows is Zarma, a language spoken in Niger. This comes in handy when she overhears a conversation between two men speaking Zarma, saying that one of them found fifty thousand dollars left in the Uber vehicle he drove and has hidden it in their apartment. She follows the men and steals the money. This also does not go smoothly. This is a nice story with a remarkable lack of morality.
As a side note, "One Too Many," "Like a Lightning Bolt," and "A Little Help From My Friend" all take place in or around Boston, the city in which I live, which seems to be the criminous center of the United States. I think I should be planning a heist instead of writing a review.
I began my discussion of these stories with a horror story about a girl being brought up by people who were not her biological parents, and I will conclude with one as well. In "Cardiff, by the Sea" by Joyce Carol Oates, the central character, Clare, is no longer a child, though. She is an adult, working in academia in Pennsylvania, where she is a post-doctoral fellow, studying nineteenth-century photography. She was brought up in Minnesota, raised by parents who adopted her when she was a two-year-old. She has no conscious memories of her life before that.
Clare is contacted by a lawyer telling her that she has been left an inheritance by her grandmother, her father's mother, in the town of Cardiff, Maine. Clare goes to Maine and is greeted by two peculiar great-aunts, who bicker constantly. Clare stays with them and their nephew, her father's brother. She sees these people as sinister; indeed, she suspects her aunts might be poisoning her. And yet, she continues staying with them.
Clare finds that the rest of her immediate family had all died violently. Newspaper accounts say that her young brother and sister and her mother had all been shot dead by her father, who had then killed himself. Clare had been found hiding in a spider-web filled cabinet under a sink.
Clare comes to suspect that her father was not the killer and wants to expose the actual murderer.
Much of the story is intentionally strange. Clare's aunts' conversations are bizarre, the lawyer is oddly unhelpful, her uncle is uncommunicative. She faints, for the first time in her life. She feels that she is in danger, but does not try to avoid it. And the very end of the story changes - perhaps - what has gone before.
Oates is a celebrated author whose work I have often liked. I do not like this story. But then, as I said earlier, I rarely like horror stories.
In addition to the fiction, there are three brief poems, titled together as "Of Clues and Clerihews." These are by Richard Stout, following the example of mystery writer E. C. Bentley. Bentley's middle initial evidently stood for "Clerihew." The poems are "humorously biographical, two couplet" verses.
Kristopher Zgorski's "Blog Bytes" feature includes praise of four mystery blogs.
The book review column, "The Jury Box" by Steve Steinbock, awards four (out of a possible five) stars to six novels, one of which is Hid from Our Eyes by Julia Spencer-Fleming. I agree with Steinbock's reference to this as a "long-awaited" entry in this series, set in upstate New York. Steinbock gives a full five stars each to The Art of Theft by Sherry Thomas and Pretty As a Picture by Elizabeth Little. He includes some shorter, unrated reviews as well.
There are not very good illustrations by Jason C. Eckhardt and Mark Evan Walker. I rather like the cover by Jennifer Dionisio, showing a young woman who reminds me of a less-pretty version of the actress Jeanne Crain.
I don't think any of the fiction in this issue is especially good, with the possible exception of "Ding Dong Bell." I do like the stories by Pronzini and Maxwell, but on the whole, I think this is an undistinguished issue.
February 21, 2020
2 • The Eleventh Commandment • 17 pages by Paul Charles
Good. George Gomez is found dead in his garage. George's non traditional view of marriage is the focuses the investigation.
19 • Run Rosie Run • 5 pages by Preston Lang
Good+. Rosie nearly died as a kid and is now an inspiration to thousands by participating in marathons. One detractor is mad because she cut some corners and threatens to expose her cheating.
24 • Lady Luck • 5 pages by Peter Lovesey
OK/Good. Danny likes to live on government handouts and burglary. He is going for a mandatory interview and wins a trip. On the last day he decides to rob a villa.
29 • In the War Zone of the Heart • 12 pages by John Lantigua
OK/Good. Willie is hired by a Nicaraguan mother. She and one of her twin sons moved to Miami. They got a tip that the other twin was coming to kill his brother. A lot of buildup of why he hates his brother, and that there won't be a way to reason with him. What's going to happen when they confront each other?
41 • Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats • 10 pages by Amy Myers
Good/OK. A man taunts police that he got away with murder. The only clue the business card of a hatter. Auguste talks with the hatter and his assistant. They have set up a museum of hats belonging to people who died suspiciously. There are four recent victims that might be involved.
51 • Bones • 4 pages by Bill Pronzini
OK/Good. Charlie is told that bones were found in a cave. A girl who was killed twenty years ago. Then we learn what Charlie knows.
55 • Here in Tremonia • 7 pages by Karr & Wehner
Fair/Poor. Disjointed telling of how people who are pushing to build a new subdivision in the settlement are dying of accidental causes. Right.
63 • A Little Help from My Friend • 4 pages by John Dobbyn
Very Good. Mystery writer John wakes up in the hospital. He gets a visit from his lead character. Mickey tells him to think of what happened, to not take the pain medicine that will dull his thinking and think of who might have wanted him dead.
67 • Kidneys • 6 pages by Rebecca Cantrell
Good. Poppy is telling Cherei about her case. A woman is accused of killing her mother-in-law. After she gives the details she asks Cherei for reasons that the girl is innocent.
73 • Ghost Cat • 13 pages by Hal Charles
Good+. Sammy is found dead with marks like he'd been mauled by a cougar. Sherrif Creeley doesn't seem happy to have a state police detective working his case. Kelly talks with the groundskeeper, the parents, the fiance and her father and with what goes for the medical examiner in this low budget county.
86 • Active Shooter • 3 pages by Jack Bunker
OK. The ex-coach is dying outside the school having been shot, and the police won't let the EMTs through to get to him.
89 • Final Thoughts • 4 pages by Susan Salzer
OK. A woman is waiting and waiting in the car for her lover.
93 • Like a Lightning Bolt • 11 pages by Dave Zeltserman
Good. Matt hears that the winning lottery ticket was bought around the corner from where he lives. He comes up with an idea for a scam.
104 • Ding Dong Bell • 16 pages by Ariel Dodson
Good+. At four years old Virginia hated her perfect cousin Melanie. At ten her parents broke up and sent her to live with her aunt, uncle and Melanie.
120 • One Too Many • 6 pages by Edith Maxwell
Good+. Jane overhears a foreign conversation. She happens to know a couple dozen foreign languages. The man is telling his brother he found fifty thousand dollars in his Uber.
126 • Cardiff, by the Sea • 67 pages by Joyce Carol Oates
OK. Clare is a loner by choice. She almost doesn't answer the phone which turned out to be a call from a lawyer telling her that her biological grandmother left her in her will. She makes the four hundred mile trip up to Maine to see the property she has been left. No one tells her what happened to her parents. It's up to her to look it up in old newspaper accounts. She finds out and then investigates and comes up with an alternate scenario. Ambiguous end to the investigation followed by an even more ambiguous final paragraph.
Good. George Gomez is found dead in his garage. George's non traditional view of marriage is the focuses the investigation.
19 • Run Rosie Run • 5 pages by Preston Lang
Good+. Rosie nearly died as a kid and is now an inspiration to thousands by participating in marathons. One detractor is mad because she cut some corners and threatens to expose her cheating.
24 • Lady Luck • 5 pages by Peter Lovesey
OK/Good. Danny likes to live on government handouts and burglary. He is going for a mandatory interview and wins a trip. On the last day he decides to rob a villa.
29 • In the War Zone of the Heart • 12 pages by John Lantigua
OK/Good. Willie is hired by a Nicaraguan mother. She and one of her twin sons moved to Miami. They got a tip that the other twin was coming to kill his brother. A lot of buildup of why he hates his brother, and that there won't be a way to reason with him. What's going to happen when they confront each other?
41 • Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats • 10 pages by Amy Myers
Good/OK. A man taunts police that he got away with murder. The only clue the business card of a hatter. Auguste talks with the hatter and his assistant. They have set up a museum of hats belonging to people who died suspiciously. There are four recent victims that might be involved.
51 • Bones • 4 pages by Bill Pronzini
OK/Good. Charlie is told that bones were found in a cave. A girl who was killed twenty years ago. Then we learn what Charlie knows.
55 • Here in Tremonia • 7 pages by Karr & Wehner
Fair/Poor. Disjointed telling of how people who are pushing to build a new subdivision in the settlement are dying of accidental causes. Right.
63 • A Little Help from My Friend • 4 pages by John Dobbyn
Very Good. Mystery writer John wakes up in the hospital. He gets a visit from his lead character. Mickey tells him to think of what happened, to not take the pain medicine that will dull his thinking and think of who might have wanted him dead.
67 • Kidneys • 6 pages by Rebecca Cantrell
Good. Poppy is telling Cherei about her case. A woman is accused of killing her mother-in-law. After she gives the details she asks Cherei for reasons that the girl is innocent.
73 • Ghost Cat • 13 pages by Hal Charles
Good+. Sammy is found dead with marks like he'd been mauled by a cougar. Sherrif Creeley doesn't seem happy to have a state police detective working his case. Kelly talks with the groundskeeper, the parents, the fiance and her father and with what goes for the medical examiner in this low budget county.
86 • Active Shooter • 3 pages by Jack Bunker
OK. The ex-coach is dying outside the school having been shot, and the police won't let the EMTs through to get to him.
89 • Final Thoughts • 4 pages by Susan Salzer
OK. A woman is waiting and waiting in the car for her lover.
93 • Like a Lightning Bolt • 11 pages by Dave Zeltserman
Good. Matt hears that the winning lottery ticket was bought around the corner from where he lives. He comes up with an idea for a scam.
104 • Ding Dong Bell • 16 pages by Ariel Dodson
Good+. At four years old Virginia hated her perfect cousin Melanie. At ten her parents broke up and sent her to live with her aunt, uncle and Melanie.
120 • One Too Many • 6 pages by Edith Maxwell
Good+. Jane overhears a foreign conversation. She happens to know a couple dozen foreign languages. The man is telling his brother he found fifty thousand dollars in his Uber.
126 • Cardiff, by the Sea • 67 pages by Joyce Carol Oates
OK. Clare is a loner by choice. She almost doesn't answer the phone which turned out to be a call from a lawyer telling her that her biological grandmother left her in her will. She makes the four hundred mile trip up to Maine to see the property she has been left. No one tells her what happened to her parents. It's up to her to look it up in old newspaper accounts. She finds out and then investigates and comes up with an alternate scenario. Ambiguous end to the investigation followed by an even more ambiguous final paragraph.
October 1, 2020
Personal reading notes:
(1) The Eleventh Commandment - Paul Charles
Too neat and precisely detailed. This is a character from a series, but I am not impressed.
(2) Run Rosie Run - Preston Lang
Once again, I seem to be missing the value of the story...
(3) Lady Luck - Peter Lovesey*
An idiot burglar gets his due. Amusing story by a Grandmaster.
(4) In the War Zone of the Heart - John Lantigua
Okay, but anticlimactic and no real ending. Very possible I am missing cultural notes. Main character is series character.
(5) Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats - Amy Myers
Victorian-era story with a series character, a chef. A very silly "cozy" mystery with shades of Poirot.
(6) Bones - Bill Pronzini
The body of a long-dead girl is found, sending an old man through a spiral of memories. He covered up his son's crime, but it never went unpunished. This story feels fuzzy and unfinished, more like a fragment than a finished work.
(7) Here in Tremonia - Karr & Whener (Passport to Crime)
Translated from German. A free-verse story of the deadly lengths the residents of Tremonia in the Ruhr Valley will take to keep their settlement from being bulldozed for a condo development. Chilling.
(8) A Little Help from My Friend - John F. Dobbyn
Metafiction. A bestselling writer's famous PI character helps him solve the mystery of who shot him. Fun, for those who enjoy stories of talking muses.
(9) Kidneys - Rebecca Cantrell
Strange little story about a woman who was murdered, with her daughter-in-law implicated. It worked out a bit too neatly for my taste, and it was unfinished, as the killer was never caught. I feel like I'm missing something.
(10) Ghost Cat - Hal Charles*
First in a new series and reads as such. A fully-developed murder mystery, though the characters are a bit shallow. Complete with twist! Might search out this author duo's series.
(11) Active Shooter - Jack Bunker
Horrific story of a man shot by a disgruntled, revenge-seeking police officer disguised as an active shooter situation at a school. No thank you to ALL of that, ugh.
(12) Final Thoughts - Susan Salzer
A cheating woman makes a fatal mistake when she sends a letter about their affair to his wife. He shows up and killers her, tho she vows revenge. Okay, albeit short. Author to watch for.
(13) Like a Lightning Bolt - Dave Zelterman*
A Julius Katz (and Archie) short. Very clever. Told from the criminal's POV, which made the end *chef's kiss*
(14) Ding Dong Bell - Ariel Dodson (Dept of First Stories)
Very odd story about murderous children. Its obvious this author's experience is in fantasy. The was not well written - how in the world did she get paid for it??
(15) One Too Many - Edith Maxwell
A petty thief takes more than she bargains for when she robs some random dudes' apartment. Interesting sideline - the thief is a hyperglot, and learned of the money because she understood the men's native language.
(16) Cardiff, By the Sea - Joyce Carol Oates
Overblown guff. Our narrator is seriously unhinged, and - really, author?
(1) The Eleventh Commandment - Paul Charles
Too neat and precisely detailed. This is a character from a series, but I am not impressed.
(2) Run Rosie Run - Preston Lang
Once again, I seem to be missing the value of the story...
(3) Lady Luck - Peter Lovesey*
An idiot burglar gets his due. Amusing story by a Grandmaster.
(4) In the War Zone of the Heart - John Lantigua
Okay, but anticlimactic and no real ending. Very possible I am missing cultural notes. Main character is series character.
(5) Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats - Amy Myers
Victorian-era story with a series character, a chef. A very silly "cozy" mystery with shades of Poirot.
(6) Bones - Bill Pronzini
The body of a long-dead girl is found, sending an old man through a spiral of memories. He covered up his son's crime, but it never went unpunished. This story feels fuzzy and unfinished, more like a fragment than a finished work.
(7) Here in Tremonia - Karr & Whener (Passport to Crime)
Translated from German. A free-verse story of the deadly lengths the residents of Tremonia in the Ruhr Valley will take to keep their settlement from being bulldozed for a condo development. Chilling.
(8) A Little Help from My Friend - John F. Dobbyn
Metafiction. A bestselling writer's famous PI character helps him solve the mystery of who shot him. Fun, for those who enjoy stories of talking muses.
(9) Kidneys - Rebecca Cantrell
Strange little story about a woman who was murdered, with her daughter-in-law implicated. It worked out a bit too neatly for my taste, and it was unfinished, as the killer was never caught. I feel like I'm missing something.
(10) Ghost Cat - Hal Charles*
First in a new series and reads as such. A fully-developed murder mystery, though the characters are a bit shallow. Complete with twist! Might search out this author duo's series.
(11) Active Shooter - Jack Bunker
Horrific story of a man shot by a disgruntled, revenge-seeking police officer disguised as an active shooter situation at a school. No thank you to ALL of that, ugh.
(12) Final Thoughts - Susan Salzer
A cheating woman makes a fatal mistake when she sends a letter about their affair to his wife. He shows up and killers her, tho she vows revenge. Okay, albeit short. Author to watch for.
(13) Like a Lightning Bolt - Dave Zelterman*
A Julius Katz (and Archie) short. Very clever. Told from the criminal's POV, which made the end *chef's kiss*
(14) Ding Dong Bell - Ariel Dodson (Dept of First Stories)
Very odd story about murderous children. Its obvious this author's experience is in fantasy. The was not well written - how in the world did she get paid for it??
(15) One Too Many - Edith Maxwell
A petty thief takes more than she bargains for when she robs some random dudes' apartment. Interesting sideline - the thief is a hyperglot, and learned of the money because she understood the men's native language.
(16) Cardiff, By the Sea - Joyce Carol Oates
Overblown guff. Our narrator is seriously unhinged, and - really, author?
March 29, 2020
Ratings for this issue:
A (excellent):
Cardiff, By the Sea by Joyce Carol Oates
One too Many by Edith Maxwell
Bones by Bill Pronzini
Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats by Amy Myers
In the War Zone of the Heart by John Lantigua
Lady Luck by Peter Lovesey
B (very good):
Like a Lightning Bolt by Dave Zeltersman
Final Thoughts by Susan Salzer
Active Shooter by Jack Bunker
Kindneys by Rebecca Cantrell
A Little Help from My Friend by John F. Dobbyn
Run Rosie Run by Preston Lang
The Eleventh Commandment by Paul Charles
C (average):
Ding Dong Bell by Ariel Dodson
Here in Tremonia by Karr & Wehner
Ghost Cat by Hal Charles
A (excellent):
Cardiff, By the Sea by Joyce Carol Oates
One too Many by Edith Maxwell
Bones by Bill Pronzini
Auguste Didier and the Mad Hatter's Hats by Amy Myers
In the War Zone of the Heart by John Lantigua
Lady Luck by Peter Lovesey
B (very good):
Like a Lightning Bolt by Dave Zeltersman
Final Thoughts by Susan Salzer
Active Shooter by Jack Bunker
Kindneys by Rebecca Cantrell
A Little Help from My Friend by John F. Dobbyn
Run Rosie Run by Preston Lang
The Eleventh Commandment by Paul Charles
C (average):
Ding Dong Bell by Ariel Dodson
Here in Tremonia by Karr & Wehner
Ghost Cat by Hal Charles
March 18, 2020
As always, a solid collection of stories.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews