"On Paladin Road" by Patti Abbott

Here's irony: of all the blogger friends and pals I've met on my journey, I have not read much of their fiction. And believe me, they have written a lot of fiction. Ya'll know who you are.

Patti Abbott, the head mistress of the fabulously fun Friday's Forgotten Books, has a new story up at A Twist of Noir. It's called "On Paladin Road" and you have to go and take a read at it. You won't be disappointed.

Patti's lamented a few times about the types of stories she writes and the available outlets for said stories. And I think she has a point. There's the hard-edged sites and the soft-edged sites and there's not a great middle ground.

But a story like Patti's is a precious thing. Her prose has a nice, graceful elegance to it, the kind of prose one normally associates with 'literary' writers. As the grandson of a carpenter and the son of a woodworker, I can feel and see the type of workshop Patti describes here: "The steely gleam of sharpened tools, the bouquet composed of oils, wax and freshly cut wood, the familiar pitch of a blade making the first cuts into a good piece of Pennsylvania cherry, were intoxicating." To me, it's the little nuances like this passage that brings a basic story up a notch or two, becoming something else.

Over on her blog the other day, she posed a question "What great movie would you not watch again?" I made my choices (you'll have to jump to her site to see them) and one of the movies I consider very good I'll never watch again merely for the ending. What I'm not saying is that the ending isn't good. It is. It stays with me and everytime I think about the movie, a hole in my stomach opens up.

I got that kind of feeling with the ending of "On Paladin Road." It fits, of course, but it's, it's...well, just go see for yourself.

"Snowy Ducks for Cover" by Erle Stanley Gardner

This is the year I pulp up, by which I mean that I plan to read a lot of classic pulp stories and NeoPulp stories (coined recently by Patti Abbott) and just absorb what makes these stories so memorable. I will improve my writing as a result. When Raymond Chandler decided to start writing stories, he studied the authors published in the Black Mask magazine. In the timeline at the front of Chandler’s Collected Stories is this entry for 1933: “Studies Erle Stanley Gardner and other representatives of pulp fiction, and spends five months writing his first story, ‘Blackmailers Don’t Shoot,’ which is published by pulp detective magazine, Black Mask.” Well, if it’s good enough for Chandler, it’s sure certainly good enough for me.

Erle Stanley Gardner is the creator of Perry Mason. For that, he’ll live on. He’s also the creator of Bertha Cool and Donald Lam, a highly entertaining series that is recommend by just about any reader who cracks open an installment. But before the novels, Gardner churned out short stories. A quick check at Thrilling Detective lists nearly forty series characters all created by Gardner’s fertile mind. There is not a series of books with all the short stories in them but there are a few. The Danger Zone and Other Stories is one such collection. Publishers Crippen and Landru bring together some never-before-reprinted stories of Gardner’s rare characters. “Snowy Ducks for Cover” (1931) is the lead story.

In the introduction, Bill Pronzini describes Snowy Shane thusly: “a tough-minded private eye with a penchant for highly unorthodox detective work.” With a sketch like that, the mind starts whipping up an image even before you read the first word. Shane gets his moniker because of “a bushy crop of gray hair which silvered his head with a grizzled mane.” In the age of the pulps, where an author only has a few lines to describe a character or situation to snare a reader, Gardner writes this about Shane on page one: “He didn’t play the game along orthodox lines, but took shortcuts whenever he felt reasonably certain of his ultimate goal.” Quite American of him, don’t you think? The ends justify the means, I guess. This one-line mission statement probably resonated with readers back in 1931, the date of this publication, where soup lines snaked around the block and men eked out an existence, looking for just a little break to get them over the hump. Shane was a good member in the long line of pulp heroes because he got results.

The case in this story is simple. Molly O’Keefe, secretary to Harley Robb, is accused of the murder of her boss. Robb, according to a handwritten “confession,” was embezzling funds from his company for speculation. O’Keefe’s defense lawyer asks Shane for any clue on which to hang a defense. Shane doesn’t’ want to do it. Then the lawyer (Sheridane) plays his trump card: “I want you to pull some of your fourth degree stuff and get our client a break.” Shane is hooked (as are we; Fourth degree stuff? Cool!) and, then, Shane is off.

Shane’s methods are not unlike the methods of countless detectives, Sherlock Holmes included. He visits the crime scene and sees something. He doesn’t tell the defense lawyer and, thus, Gardner doesn’t tell us. Shane visits each of three men, all members of the company’s advisory committee—and, thus, the benefactors of Robb’s untimely death—and asks random questions, sometimes only one before dragging the sputtering lawyer to the next suspect. In one exchange, the Shane-as-Sherlock, I’m-not-going-to-tell-you-anything comparison is quite apparent:

In the taxicab, the lawyer regarded him [Shane] speculatively.
“Really, Snowy, I don’t see what you gained.”
“Shut up,” said the detective. “I’m thinkin’.”

The way Shane identifies the true murderer is interesting and, certainly unorthodox. It might be illegal nowadays what with our penchant to sue over the most inane things, usually the result of a lack of self-responsibility. There’s a nice presentation quality to the reveal, something akin to the Thin Man movies, although the main confession takes place off-stage. The last paragraph explains the story’s title and seems to imply this isn’t the first Shane story even though I can’t find a list of Shane stories on the web.

Gardner presents this story in the traditional fashion: an interested party approaches the detective, gives the detective (and reader) all the pertinent data, the detective does his thing, and the bad guy is caught. Nothing really earth-shattering in scope but, then, Gardner was just using the template so many other pulp authors used (and still use).

The prose is quick, exciting, and full of good Pulp Words and Phrases: frail (a woman); jane (a woman); “His eyes went slithering about…”; “Sheridane’s brow was corrugated…”; and my personal favorite: “Robb didn’t cop that coin without some split.”

What I Learned As A Writer: Description. I’ve been knocked time and again for not providing a description of a character, a scene, or the surrounding environment. In this story, Gardner always introduces a character and describes him, even if it’s the bare minimum, allowing the reader to fill in the blanks. I’ve taken to reading with a pencil in hand, circling and annotating things I need to learn. This story is a good lesson in description.

"The Nightmare" by Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan)

I finally read something ten days my fortieth birthday that kids in elementary school read: a Tarzan story. Granted, I didn’t really read it; I listened to it via the incredibly talented voice of B. J. Harrison, the man behind The Classic Tales Podcast (more on this later). As a tantalizing preview of his reading the first Tarzan book (Tarzan of the Apes), Harrison recorded a short story, “The Nightmare.”

First off, Harrison gave us Tarzan novices a little background: this story takes place after Tarzan has learned to read but before he has met any other white men. Knowing Tarzan solely from a visual medium, I know enough of the basic story not to feel lost. In fact, I think that’s why Harrison provided the intro. Had he not, some listeners might’ve kept waiting for Jane or Boy. That stuff isn’t here.

“The Nightmare” is one of the stories from Jungle Tales of Tarzan, the sixth book published by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1916. Based on a quick Wikipedia (the source of all truth!) search, it turns out the twelve stories from Jungle Tales occurs in the time frame between chapters 12 and 13 of the first book. Guess that’s why Harrison gave us a heads up.

The story itself is entertaining and not without humor. In this story, Tarzan experiences two things for the first time: eating cooked meat and the titular nightmare. Burroughs goes into detail on Tarzan’s eating habits, noting that he has never had cooked elephant meat. He doesn’t want to eat the cooked meat but he’s famished. Thus, after he overcomes one of the Mbongans, he grabs some elephant meat and gorges.

Now, at this part, Burroughs has a little fun with his readers. As a general rule, most of us prefer our meat dead and cooked. I’m right there, aren’t I? Anyway, Burroughs states the obvious: “Tarzan was, of course, unaccustomed to cooked food. He did not like it; but was very hungry and had eaten a considerable portion of his haul before it was really borne in upon him that the stuff was nauseating.” Now, for any of us, stranded in the woods, faced with death or eating raw meat, we’d eat. Ditto for The Ape Man, just the other way around.

He lies down to sleep and the nightmares commence. He gets himself captured by a big giant bird. This, of course, happened right before Tarzan was about to be lion food. In the dream—by the way, Tarzan doesn’t know it’s a dream—he stabs the bird and then falls to the earth…and lives to tell about. He wakes, figures out it wasn’t real, and goes on about his business.

Then, a real, live threat shows up, in the form of a gorilla. I think you can guess what happens: Tarzan thinks it a dream. Until he realizes it isn’t. He lives, natch, but questions reality. The last line is but a verbal rim shot: “No, he did not know what was real and what was not; but there as one thing that he did know—never again would he eat of the flesh of Tantor, the elephant.”

I enjoyed this little story and a peek into the literary Tarzan of the Apes. It will not be my last.

Notes on The Classic Tales Podcast: since late 2007, Harrison has been recording and making available—for free—his readings of, um, classic tales. He’s done everything from Arthur Conan Doyle (The Hound of the Baskervilles) to Lovecraft to Stoker to Conrad (Heart of Darkness). His readings are excellent. He usually gives a nice introduction and then reads the stories or poems. He’s certainly got that stage actor elocution and that’s a good thing for older tales like this. I can’t see him reading, say, Spillane, but, with classic tales of adventure, horror, and mystery, he’s excellent.

The podcasts are free from iTunes but only the newer ones. Archived podcasts are available from Audible.com at nominal fees (less than $1). He’s making his reading of Tarzan of the Apes available for $5.53 (or $0.79 per episode). I’m going to download it and will have a review in January. Go on by his website and listen to some samples. I bet you’ll get hooked.

"The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle" - A Review

Of all the Sherlock Holmes stories, I have read three over and over. The novel The Hounds of the Baskervilles continues to entertain me. “A Scandal in Bohemia” is unique because Holmes is outwitted by a woman. But it is the sole Christmas story, “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle,” that I have read more than any other Holmes story.

I re-read it again this Christmas season, as I do most years, and enjoyed it as much as I always have. This time, however, I read it as a writer. I am no Sherlockian scholar by any means but I did observe a couple of interesting tidbits. I assume you’ve all read the story so there will be spoilers throughout.

The most obvious facet of the story is so obvious, it can be missed: the structure. Arthur Conan Doyle always gives the reader, in the form of Watson, all the facts of the case. Two days after Christmas, Watson stops by Baker Street “with the intention of wishing [Holmes] the compliments of the season.” The detective has been examining a hat and, after retelling how the hat came into his possession, beckons Watson to play detective. “Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather yourself as to the individuality of the man who has worn this article?” I think Doyle puts this scene at the front of the story not only to propel the case forward but also to offer his readers more insight into the world first consulting detective. “Blue Carbuncle” was the seventh short story published and there might have been a few folks who were not attuned to Holmes’ ways.

The hat wasn’t the only thing brought to Baker Street. It also came with a goose. Holmes released the goose to the policeman who found both items but the story really gets moving when that same policeman returns to 221B with the blue carbuncle in his hand, the very same gem recently stolen from the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Now, Holmes’s little mental exercise pays dividends as he and Watson now must find the owner and trace the path of the carbuncle and exonerate an innocent man.

It is the path that I noted in this re-reading. Holmes and Watson follow the trail of the gemstone: from goose to the club from which it was given to Henry Baker (the hat’s owner) to the reseller to the lady who fattens geese for sale. What fascinated me was the logical progression. Nothing was coincidence, something I struggle with in my own writing. Oh, I think, I need Guy and Girl to meet so they’ll rob a bank together. I’ll just have them talking aloud at a street corner, they’ll hear each other, and then… Yeah. Not believable. Even train of thought and action in “Blue Carbuncle” is consistent and rational.

Doyle’s word choices in this story are also of note. They’re subtle but say a good deal about how Doyle sees his creation. On the first page, Doyle writes, “…he [Holmes] jerked his thumb in the direction of the hat…” It’s the word “jerked” that striking. Not motioned or pointed but jerked. Doyle’s showing us Holmes brain had already moved on past the problem of the hat—something that probably took seconds for him—until Watson arrived. Once he has an audience, Holmes frankly, to show off. I think he needs to demonstrate his prowess. How else can you explain all the times when he doesn’t even let Watson in on his plans?

I also appreciated how Doyle’s word choices allowed the readers to fill in the blanks. With space limited in a short story, Doyle didn’t have time to go on and on describing things. Watson noticing the ice crystals forming on the windows of 221B Baker Street allows the readers to create their own mental picture of what Victorian London at Christmas time. Undoubtedly, we almost all think of Dickens and Scrooge and you probably wouldn’t be far off. A little later, Doyle writes “…and the breath of the passers-by flew out into smoke like so many pistol shots.” Now, if that isn’t a great way to describe seeing people’s breath on a cold night, I don’t know what is. And then there is the use of the word “ejaculated” to describe a vocal utterance. Never understood that one.

As I turn my own writing attention to short stories, it is nice to return to a familiar and loved tale and dig deeper into what makes it a great story. It’s Holmes and Watson to be sure as well as the Victorian setting. The story itself, however, is the key. It’s a page-turner with few pages. The action propels you forward until you reach the end and Holmes’ Christmas pardon to the culprit. Doyle may have grown to dislike his creation but the man can still tell a good story. I hope to, as well.

"Monsters" by Ed McBain

Last Christmas, some teenage punks stole our spotlight from the front yard. We needed the spotlight to shine on the Christmas decorations that didn’t have their own intrinsic lighting. It’s pretty difficult to explain to a young son why someone would do something like that. Moreover, it’s really difficult to explain and not use bad words. Well, at least they weren’t as bad as the teenagers in Ed McBain’s story “Monsters.”

It’s Halloween and long after the little kiddies and the middle schoolers have gone home to count their loot, a couple of teenagers show up to the house of our nameless narrator. He’s a sixty-eight-year-old widower and, when he opens the door, he sees the two boys “wearing identical green Frankenstein masks and dark jackets over blue jeans and high-topped sneakers.” McBain’s story was published in 1994 but I couldn’t escape the images of the two shooters from Columbine as I read this story back in 2002 and, again, yesterday. It’s not a far stretch to think those thoughts because one of the Franks pulls out a switchblade. With the elderly gentleman scared to death, they rob him. He’s okay with money and other things being taken but they steal his dead wife’s precious things. For that, he doesn’t’ forgive.

The two Franks even take the jelly beans and fruit—pears and apples—from the bowl near the front door. They stuff the candy into their pockets and raise the masks just enough to chop the fruit. Laughing, the last thing the two Franks say is “See you next year.”

The gentleman calls the cops but they’re bored and never follow up. The gentleman buys a gun but doesn’t think he’ll be able to look another human—even ones as monstrous as the two Franks—and pull the trigger. Still, he’s ready. He won’t let it happen again.

Sure enough, they return the following year. This time, they have a gun, too. The two Franks brazenly use their names—Tommy and Frankie—and haul so much stuff from the gentleman’s house that it takes them three trips. Finally, before they leave, the gentleman pulls out his gun. They laugh. From Frankie, this: “Blow him away, Tommy,” he said softly. The gentleman whirls and is stuck in the head. He falls, gasping.

Tommy and Frankie guffaw yet again. “See you next year,” they say. They take the man’s pistol and stuff their pockets again with fruit and jelly beans.

And then it happens.

(Don’t want to give away the ending but an astute reader might see it coming.)

Ironically, this was the first McBain story I had ever read. Back in 2002, I had a vague notion of who McBain was but that was all. Now, after reading Cop Hater, I can see the best traits of McBain’s writing style here in this nasty, brutish short story: great pulp fiction verbs and a quick, no-nonsense delivery.

If you’ve read my review of Cornelia Reed’s award-winning story “Hungry Enough,” you’ll know I love how the meanings of titles can change after you’ve read a particular story. As the lead-off story of the anthology Murder for Halloween, “Monsters” evokes certain images in your mind, especially considering it’s tied with Halloween. We usually think of the monsters from the old Universal films: Dracula, Frankenstein, or The Wolf Man. Modern readers might think of Freddie, Jason, or that weird guy from the Saw movies. Here, the term monster is meant for the two teenagers. Surely, their actions make them monsters, right? Sure, not as bad as the punks who stole my spotlight but that’s just a difference in degree, not kind.

But the end of the story makes you wonder about the elderly gentleman as well. Is he the hero? Or is, he, too, a monster? That’s the beauty of the title: you can make up your own mind.

“Monsters,” by Ed McBain, published in Murder for Halloween: Tales of Suspense, edited by Michele Slung and Roland Hartman (The Mysterious Press), 1994.

"Femme Fatale" by Laura Lippman

Laura Lippman has always been on my To-Read list. I know of her, who her main heroine is (Tess Monaghan), and, more importantly, where she lives (Baltimore). She has become synonymous with that city just as Pelecanos has with DC, Connelly and Chandler with LA, or Lehane with Boston. Just last month, at Bouchercon in Baltimore, the native daughter walked away with three awards, all for her novel What the Dead Know. As I wait for that audiobook to arrive from my library, I decided to take a read at a short story Lippman wrote for Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir, edited by Duane Swierczynski (Busted Flush Press).

“Femme Fatale” is the last story is a sub-section entitled “Killers and Cons.” You meet 68-year-old (“No, I’m really 61.”) Mona in LeisureWorld, a retirement community and immediately, you begin to wonder: is Mona a killer or a con? Mona doesn’t fit in with the merry folks at LeisureWorld. She’s moderately well-off after her fourth (although she convinced the man he was her second marriage) but not so well off as to afford the kind of lifestyle she thinks she deserves. More importantly, Mona has nothing to do, nothing to occupy her time. Until she meets Bryon.

In a Starbucks, Bryon (“With an ‘o,’ like the poet, only the ‘r’ comes first.”) mistakes Mona for a famous starlet. Even when it’s proven she’s not the former star, Bryon keeps after her. He’s an independent filmmaker and he’d like to get a few shots of Mona. He convinces her to come to his studio—“a large locker in one of those storage places.”—and model for him. Cautiously, he gets her to pose in her birthday suit. Mona is shocked at first until she learns people pay to see what she has.

“People pay?” [Mona asks.]
Another shy nod. “It’s sort of a. . . niche within the industry.”
“Niche.”
“It’s my niche,” he said. “It’s what I like. I make other films about, um, things I don’t like so much. But I love watching truly seasoned women teach young men about life.”
“And you’d pay for this?”
“Of course.”
“How much?”
“Some. Enough.”
“Just to look? Just to see me, as I am?”
“A little for that. More for . . . more.”
“How much?” Mona repeated. She was keen to know her worth.

Mona’s worth gets established as the story progresses. She’s always liked the looks of her own body and gets quite fond of performing for the camera. Later, she realizes there’s more money to be made if only Bryon will let her in. When he doesn’t, well, let’s just remember the title of this sub-section: “Killers and Cons.” You’ll have to read the story to find out which one is Mona.

Prose-wise, I particularly enjoyed the way Lippman used ellipses. She keenly conveyed Bryon’s hesitancy at broaching the subject of his films to Mona and, later, Lippman uses them to show Mona’s adept acting abilities.

Lippman is sly in the way she introduces the true subject of her story. And, when it clicks for Mona, as in the passage above, you can just see her hesitant eyes sharpen, her brain working over the angles. Work them over, she does, and, by the end of the story, she finally has something with which to occupy her time. And she’s happy. You’ll be happy, too, after you’ve read this fun little noir gem.

"Bodies Piled Up" by Dashiell Hammett

In a recent blog review of the December issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, one commenter wrote that he didn’t even realize EQMM was still being published. Such is the state of mainstream short mystery fiction that even avid mystery readers don’t know about EQMM or its sister, Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Well, EQMM is still being published, albeit in a smaller format. I have been an infrequent reader these past years but the editors at EQMM started something in 2008 that will certainly bring more readers who, like me, loved the hard-boiled material.

Starting with the January 2008 issue, EQMM features reprinted stories from the old Black Mask Magazine and new stories written in the same style. Black Mask was one of the most popular pulp magazines of the 1920s and many of the names we now associate with pulp and crime fiction—Erle Stanley Gardner, Carroll John Daly, Leslie Charteris, Raymond Chandler, and other—got their start in Black Mask. But EQMM decided to begin their new series with the most popular writer to emerge from the pages of Black Mask, Dashiell Hammett.

“Bodies Piled Up” is a 1923 Continental-Op story set in a San Francisco hotel. The Continental-Op is a nameless detective who, according to Thrilling Detective, is the reason we have the PI in the form he is now in. This story begins with the Continental-Op working a shift at the Montgomery Hotel, filling in until the hotel owners can find a replacement for the detective they fired for drunkenness. There is a problem in room 906 and the Op and the assistant manager go up and see what’s what. The maid is standing in the room, transfixed by a thin line of blood snaking out from under a closet door. The Op opens the door and a body falls out. Then another. And a third. The main fainted. And the Op has a mystery on his hands.

Having recently read two novels (here and here) by Erle Stanley Gardner, one of the masters of the puzzle in detective fiction, I was impressed by Hammett’s ability to present the facts as the Op saw them. This is not some rote, boring, long-winded recitation of data. No, Hammett punches you in the gut with short, blunt sentences that gives you all you need to know. His investigation leads to three men, one of whom registered under a false name. Once the Op figured out who the man was, he decided to set a trap for him. In disguise, the Op meets with the suspect. Unfortunately for the Op, the suspect doesn’t just want to chat. He has a gun and wants to take out the man (Cudner) the Continental-Op is supposed to be. Then, the fun begins as the real Cudner shows up.

In a brisk fifteen pages, Hammett gives us dead bodies, a murder mystery, a gun fight, and a resolution, all with clean, precise hard-boiled prose. “Bodies Piled Up” is quite entertaining and a high standard for all future Black Mask stories.

Note: the August issue features a new story by the late Mickey Spillane.

“Bodies Piled Up,” by Dashiell Hammett, published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, January 2008.

To subscribe to EQMM or AHMM, visit The Mystery Place. Starting in 2009, I'm going to subscribe again.

"Interrogation B" by Charlie Huston

Cops get the shaft more often than not. If it’s not the brass dictating some new bureaucratic regulation whose only designs is to appeal to the mayor’s office and crime statistics it’s the criminals who laugh in their faces and make cops’ lives miserable. You see it in the newspapers, on TV, and in stories. In real life, we hate reading about this kind of thing. In a book or TV show, we love it. What’s a cop supposed to do?

Well, if you name is Borden, a lady detective, you can do a lot. But first, she’s got to take grief from the skank chick that’s she’s just arrested. The chick is mouthing off with “bitch this” or “bitch that” and worse. Then there’s Daws, the prick fellow detective, a male, who wears designer clothes in a way that she, as a female detective, could never get away with. Pisses Borden off. And all she wants to do is fill out the BS form with information from the chick. The chick literally spits on Daws twice, once on his shoe and once on his crotch. He’s pissed, especially since they are $200 pants. Daws wants Borden to let him have five minutes alone with the chick, teach her some manners. Borden defers and tells Daws to go get cleaned up. He leaves, grumbling the entire time.

Then Borden does her thing. You’re just going to have to read it.

In the second section, Daws, Borden, and some other cops are playing poker and Borden ruminates on what she did to The Bitch, as she thinks of the skanky chick. Borden makes an interesting point about the value of life. Oh, and stay until the last line.

This is my first Charlie Huston story and it’s the first time I’ve read a story with its unique format. There are no quotation marks. Every bit of dialogue is prefaced by an em dash. As such, there are no “he said” or “she said” bits of prose either. That’s a good thing when reading this story. The streamlined prose makes the reading zip along. This style also avoids many adverbs, letting the dialogue or the action give you context. This is black-and-white storytelling. There is no gray. Cool stuff.

"Interrogation B" by Charlie Huston, published in A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir (Busted Flush Press).

Note: it's ironic that I'm reviewing stories from this book on Wednesdays and not as a whole because this anthology is so good. Kinda makes me think I should have done that. However, this way, I can give the stories more attention. I'm basically picking stories at random and none have failed to entertain. David Cranmer, over at The Education of a Pulp Writer, commented on Busted Flush Press's new blog that he's reading A Hell of a Woman. I suspect David will write about this anthology when he's done. Look for it.

“Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy" by Duane Swierczynski

Everybody has an inner geek. Whether its love of films, comics, carpentry, art, whatever, most people really dig into their passion. (I hate to say hobby because it degrades the passion; it’s like when I cringe at being called a history buff when I’m a trained historian with a Master’s degree.) These junkies learn the history of their chosen passion and can recite trivia ad nauseum to anyone out there, especially to fellow members of said geekdom. It’s like telling grammar jokes to a bunch of English teachers. When the punch line is “No, it’s a gerund!” only English teachers and tech writers laugh.

Count among this group the narrator of Duane Swierczynski’s short story “Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy.” The unnamed narrator loves crime fiction the way some people like “Star Wars.” He knows all, even the most trivial of stuff. He buys old issues of mystery magazines on eBay. And when the story opens, he’s found a long-lost author, Cole Ford.

In 1954, Ford set the crime fiction world on fire with the publication of one 1,200-word story. The narrator tells us what kind of impact the story had.

“It was the Clash, circa 1954.
It was the H-bomb in your den.
Nobody who read it fresh off the newsstand was ever the same again.”

Famous real-life mystery authors are quoted, included David Goodis, the Philadelphia native that Swierczynski loves. Goodis, it seems, read Ford’s story and had to move back in with his parents to get his life right again.”

It’s this kind of humor and wink of an eye Swierczynski gives us on this entertaining story. Swierczynski wrote this story for anyone but, like those grammar jokes for the English teacher crowd, there’s a lot more to this story that crime fiction geeks will get.

The title of the story refers to a lost manuscript written by Ford and it’s the narrator’s quest to find the man and the manuscript. He finds Ford through Ford’s agent, Luther McCall. Both men are now in their 80s. Unfortunately for the narrator, he gets more than he bargained for. Fortunately for us—geeks all who would take a similar quest searching out our own hold grail—the story ends with a lovely twist. I liked, also, how Swierczynski drops in references to Philly, bringing the city to the forefront as well as his love of crime fiction.

“Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy” is a story published in Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir (Busted Flush Press). The anthology title alone is worth a few chuckles as is Swierczynski’s introduction relating how he approached these authors, some of whom he’s admired for years. One of those writers is the recently-deceased James Crumley who provides a guest introduction. Crumley thanks Swierczynski “…for talking me into this…” Wouldn’t you have liked to have been a fly on the wall during that conversation. I can’t help but wonder if Swierczynski wrote his story after meeting and contacting these other writers. Something tells me it’s a good possibility.

"Hungry Enough" by Cornelia Reed

What I like about a book or story title is the two different meanings it delivers. When you buy a book or read a story, the title means one thing. That is, a group of words, intended to illicit a reaction in the potential buyer’s mind, enough to buy the book or read the story. The second meaning comes after you’ve completed the story. Then, you can look back on the title and see a whole different meaning. That’s what happens when you read Cornelia Reed’s short story “Hungry Enough.”

The story opens with Julia being driven by her friend, Kay, back to Kay’s mansion in southern California. They’ve had too many gins over lunch and Kay wants to show Julia some clothes she’s purchased for her. You see, both women are life-long friends and they came out to California in the late 1950s to find stardom and a husband. Kay’s found the latter in the person of Kenneth, a rich producer. Julia small credit is as an ingénue on the television show “Perry Mason.” Kay has money to spare and she seems to like to spare it on Julia.

When they get to Kay’s house, Julia discovers that Kenneth is dead. Apparently, the cables that suspended a large glass slab over the master bed have snapped and poor Kenneth got it in the face. Julia calls her boss, a PI, and he comes to take care of the mess.

Where the title of the book comes in is in a bit of dialogue the two women have on the way to the mansion. Kay laments Julia’s husbandless status as a way not to talk about the dashing of her own dreams of fame and stardom. They talk about the younger women who constantly arrive in Hollywood via Greyhound buses and how pretty they are.

“I’m better looking.” [Kay says]
“Fairest one of all,” I said. “But you aren’t hungry enough. You never were.”

Again, this one line in the story has more than one meaning. It’s been established that Kay is a milquetoast when it comes to her husband. He lavishes her with gifts and material possessions but she’s not happy, especially after the one night when she discovered what Kenneth really used the suspended glass slab for. And you realize her “hunger” can be interpreted in more than one way. Wonderful way to be subtle while still allowing the double meaning to cut you. By the end of the story—which has a great last line—you’re just smiling and nodding your head.

There’s also a little element of “The Sixth Sense” to this story. When you get to the end, read it again and you’ll see all the signposts of the eventual outcome—unless you saw them the first time. I didn’t and that second time was just as fun.

This is the third story I’ve read from A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, published by Busted Flush Press, and edited by Megan Abbott. This story has been nominated for the 2008 Shamus Award. The winners will be announced 10 October 2008.

"Cutman" by Christa Faust

“Cutman” by Christa Faust

When I discovered Christa Faust earlier this year with her novel Money Shot, I started looking for other things she had written. Lo and behold I found that I already had a Faust-penned short story in A Hell of a Woman, the same anthology from which the Ken Bruen story I reviewed last week came. Judging an author by one book or story can be tricky. You only get a pattern the more you read. And, upon reading two stories by Faust, all I’ve got to say is watch out, brother, she’ll slay you with her words as soon as look at you.

A cutman is the guy at the side of a boxing ring whose sole job is to stop fighters from bleeding. Except that the Cutman in Faust’s story is a woman. But not just any woman. She is a self-described “big, ugly dyke” but she does her job well. And men respect her for it.

But not all men. Santiago Diaz, a fighter, doesn’t give the nameless Cutman a second look. He’s the boyfriend of the girl—Mia “Tinkerbell” Ortega—the Cutman loves and wants to be with. When Mia ends up in the hospital, suffering from injuries sustained in a “car accident” or “a fall,” the Cutman knows the truth. And knows who to blame. That’s when she decides to kill Diaz.

Like all good short stories, the ending is not what you see coming. Or, perhaps, you do, if you’ve got a twisted mind. Well, a lot of us do and we’re drunk on stories in books, TV, and film that ram the formulaic down our throats and tell us it’s something new. I’ll admit that I saw part of the ending coming, or rather, as I was reading the story, I thought “Wouldn’t it be interesting if this happened?” It did. Still, the story gives me a punch in the face when it happened.

If you listen to Faust in interviews, you’ll get an honest, blue-collar vibe from her: she’s just a storyteller, an 9-to5er who bangs out prose like other people mine coal or work a diner. But she’s gifted, especially with short, powerful sentences that can evoke a feeling in you that other authors need a paragraph or more to do. Here’s her narrator describing the boxing hall: “The raw, animal sound of the crowd. The fighters’ wordless language of grunts and heavy breath and the dull slap of leather against flesh. The smell of sweat under hot lights.” This isn’t Madison Square Garden. This is something old, beat-up, somewhat dingy where rules might be tossed if the price is right.

Stories, whether novels or short stories, need that killer opening line to reel us in and make us read the story. “Cutman” has two. The first line sets the hook: “Just because I’m a cutman, doesn’t mean I’m a man.” Okay, that’s intriguing, and, for folks like me, I needed to keep reading just to figure out what a cutman actually was. But then Faust really kicks it up with this sentence: “I guess you heard about what happened with Mia?” Okay, if you didn’t already have me, now I’m really there.

But I was already there. Faust has a way with prose that is not just workmanlike. Her characters sing with authenticity. She’s good. And I’ll read anything she writes. You should, too.

"Cutman" by Christa Faust, published in A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, edited by Megan Abbott, published by Busted Flush Press.

"Nora B" by Ken Bruen

Is there any better way to start a new ongoing review series of short stories than with Ken Bruen? Sure, some folks’ll say I should have started with Hammett, Chandler, or any of the Golden Age guys. They're all good and I’ll get there. But I wanted to start off with a bang. Bruen it was.

I’ve been a fan of Bruen since his first novel, The Guards, kicked the crap out of me. Bruen’s writing style is unique among modern noir authors, easily digested but hard as hell to imitate. If Irish folks are supposed to speak with a lilt, then Bruen’s prose barks with brogue.

“Nora B” is a nice introduction to the Bruen style of prose and his type of character. Short, choppy sentences—or incomplete sentences but complete thoughts—rapidly get you into the head of the narrator, a cop somewhere in America, probably New York or Boston. The narrator’s partner, Richy, has fallen for Nora, a waitress at a bar they frequent. And in direct contrast to other authors who might use flowing phrases to describe a woman’s beauty, the narrators just gives you his gut reaction, usually with a lot of F-bombs. But it’s charming, in a way.

The action progresses how you might expect but Bruen does not sacrifice character either. The narrator has depth and he is changed in the mere span of ten pages. Everyone knows how I like endings and this one is fantastic. In fact, it’ll leave you breathless with a bunch of images you’d rather not have in your head. But isn’t that what short fiction is supposed to do, let the reader finish the story? Bruen does just that.

"Nora B" by Ken Bruen, published in A Hell of a Woman: An Anthology of Female Noir, edited by Megan Abbott, published by Busted Flush Press.

Wednesday Short Story Reviews

One of my goals in my professional life is to write short stories. I don't expect to be someone like the late Edward D. Hoch who published a story in either Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock's magazines for something like thirty years straight. But I do want to broaden my writing to include short stories. And I would also like to develop characters that readers enjoy and will want to read again and again.

In order to understand the different rules of writing short stories, I'm going to start reviewing them each Wednesday. Much like my book reviews, I plan on writing about the stories, the author's style, and why the story worked (or didn't work). In this fashion, I intend to continue my self-education in crime fiction and see where it leads me. To publication, I hope.