EQMM, November 2009 Read online

  After a while, the snow was falling so heavily that the two men could not even see their own feet.

  Copyright © 2009 by Clark Howard

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  Clark Howard

  No longtime reader of EQMM needs to be told that Clark Howard is one of those magical tale-spinners who can completely transport his readers to any scene of his choosing. After all, he's won the EQMM Readers Award an incredible five times. And don't forget his Best Short Story Edgar Allan Poe and Derringer awards, or his Anthony, Shamus, Spur, and multiple Edgar nominations for best short story. He has the gift of storytelling in abundance, and he's mostly chosen to exercise it in the production of short fiction. More than 200 of his stories have appeared in magazines, and two collections of his short work have been published to date. Most of those stories fall under the umbrella of crime fiction, but the Tennessee-born author is also versed in several other genres.

  Lest anyone think the short story is the only realm in which the legendary Clark Howard excels, we should point out that he has sixteen well-received novels in print and is the author of some of the most notable true-crime books in the genre, including Six Against the Rock, which was made into a TV movie.

  Clark Howard's inspiration often appears to derive from the world of prisons, which he became very familiar with in researching his true-crime books. In honor of his Golden Derringer Award, we've reprinted a 1992 EQMM cover in which the author himself is posed behind bars. The cover, of course, is meant to be humorous, but Clark Howard's treatment of the prisoners and ex-cons who people his stories is compassionate and moving. Yet another reason why he's proved to be among mystery's all-time best short story writers!

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  Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen

  With due respect to the New York majors, the publishers whose offerings I anticipate most eagerly are located in Norfolk, Virginia (Crippen & Landru), Lyons, Colorado (Rue Morgue), Vancleave, Mississippi (Ramble House), and Eureka, California (Stark House). Latest from the latter is a threesome by paperback master Harry Whittington, To Find Cora/Like Mink for Murder/Body and Passion ($17.95), novels obscurely published in 1963, 1957, and 1952, respectively. The middle title, published in France as T'asdes Visions! and revised for the American sleaze market as Passion Hangover (Corinth, 1965; as by J.X. Williams), was molded into its current desleazed state by editor David Laurence Wilson. Noir elements are familiar (ex-con trying to go straight, naive nice girl and avaricious femme fatale, pressure to do one final job), but emotionally heightened narrative, quick pace, and surprising twists demonstrate how good even lesser Whittington could be. Wilson's account of tracking down Whittington's pseudonymous work is an enthralling nonfictional detective story.

  **** Ed Gorman: The Midnight Room, Leisure, $7.99. In a small Midwestern city, widely admired Dr. Peter Olson loses more than his money in a home-invasion burglary: two DVDs reveal Olson's secret life as rapist and killer of young women. Police seeking a third missing girl include detectives Michael Scanlon, his dissolute brother Steve, and Kim Pierce, who is currently dating the charming Dr. Olson. The novel is expertly written, rich in pointed social commentary, and brilliantly plotted—you'll do well to guess any of the twists, including some visceral shocks. But as usual with Gorman, the key element is the deeply realized and painfully real characters, including an especially memorable villain—and not the one you think.

  **** Hallie Ephron: Never Tell a Lie, Morrow, $24.99. Pregnant Ivy Rose's happy life in suburban Massachusetts is threatened when another expectant mother, an acquaintance from high school days, turns up at her yard sale, is taken inside by Ivy's husband David for a tour of the house, and disappears. Ephron's first solo mystery, with the intricate structure of a Mary Higgins Clark novel and a more flavorful style, is a suspenseful and well-wrought example of the am-I-married-to-a-murderer subgenre that dates back at least as far as Francis Iles's 1932 classic Before the Fact.

  *** Dean Koontz: Relentless, Bantam, $27. Bestselling novelist Cullen Greenwich, menaced (not just in print) by an evil book critic, goes on the run with plucky wife, genius six-year-old son, and mysteriously gifted dog. Is this suspense, horror, satire, conspiracy thriller, science fiction, fantasy, spiritual allegory? Try all of the above. Over every top and off every wall, combining the sunniest of humor with the darkest and bloodiest of events, Koontz is sui gen-eris: no one else could have written this.

  *** Lee Goldberg: Mr. Monk and the Dirty Cop, Obsidian, $22.95. Obsessive compulsive Adrian Monk, laid off from his consultancy job with the San Francisco police, joins a P.I. firm. As in the TV series created by Andy Breckman, sharp character comedy combines with ingenious and fairly clued puzzle-spinning. The main problem concerns the arrest of Captain Stottlemeyer for murder; two of the secondary mysteries ("Mr. Monk and the Old Lesson” and “Mr. Monk and the Godfather") could stand alone as short stories. Don't miss Lt. Disher's hilariously nonsensical variation on Sherlock Holmes's “eliminate the impossible” dictum.

  *** Anthony Boucher and Denis Green: The Casebook of Gregory Hood, Crippen & Landru, $29 hardcover, $20 trade paperback. The Holmes radio scripters also wrote its 1946 summer replacement, introducing San Francisco im-porter and gentleman sleuth Hood. Fourteen lively scripts, rich in detail of the period and locale and often including allusions to real-life Bay Area personalities, feature Boucher's fair-play puzzle plotting. Joe R. Christopher's introduction, notes, and episode checklist are models of thorough scholarship.

  *** Parnell Hall: Dead Man's Puzzle, Minotaur, $24.95. Like both Monk and Hood, Puzzle Lady Cora Felton inhabits a world where details are realistic, but the big picture is pleasantly fanciful. Three crosswords by Manny Nosowsky and a sudoku by Will Shortz are keys to the plot, and even if the cute-dialogue-as-page-filler gets a bit tiresome, the almost Queenian solution is ingenious.

  ** Denis Johnson: Nobody Move, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, $23. Gambler Jimmy Luntz, on the run from loan sharks in Bakersfield, California, joins forces with Anita Desilvera, framed for embezzlement by her prosecutor husband and a corrupt judge. An exercise in sex and violence, flashy but lacking sympathetic characters or an engaging plot, merits grudging respect for crisp prose and punchy, darkly comic dialogue. Jacket-flap comparisons to Hammett and Chandler are way off the mark. (Also on CD, read by Will Patton [Macmillan Audio, $24.95]).

  ** John Shannon: Palos Verdes Blue, Pegasus, $25. The title refers to both an endangered California coastal butterfly species and the habitat-conscious missing teenager sought by unofficial private eye Jack Liffey. The much-praised Shannon writes well and has a good eye for Southern California social strata, but he represents much that is wrong with contemporary crime fiction: excessive back story, self-indulgent literary references, smugly pretentious dialogue, weak plot, and soap opera contrivances. Liffey's sentimental determination to keep alive an animal in severe pain from cancer made me doubt his moral compass.

  ** Matthew Glass: Ultimatum, Atlantic Monthly, $24. This international relations thriller, totally undistinguished for prose, dialogue, and characterization, offers an involving story and plenty of wonky policy debate as the newly elected President (the year is 2032) tries to figure out how to reach an agreement with China and save the world from galloping climate change.

  Finally, four juvenile novels, all di-rected at readers twelve and up:

  *** Rachel Wright: You've Got Blackmail, Putnam, $16.99. Fourteen-year-old Lozzie Cracknell's slangy and comical first-person narrative is distinctively British but also unmistakably contemporary teen, so the few unfamiliar terms shouldn't discourage young American readers. School bullies, separated parents, and a blackmailing scheme that may involve Lozzie's novelist English teacher figure in a fast-moving, highly enjoyable tale that is also a genuine detective story.

  *** Brent Hartinger: Project Sweet Life, HarperTeen, $16.99. Tacoma 15-year-old Dave and his two best friends, ordered by their fathers to get summer jobs, explore ways to make the requisite cash with
out working, including solving a series of bank robberies and seeking a treasure hidden in the city's underground tunnels. Some young readers will have fun shooting holes in this episodic comic novel's preposterous plot, but expert telling and healthily moral message disarm criticism. One plot element, the history of Tacoma's treatment of its Chinese population, is expanded upon in a concluding author's note.

  ** Jennifer Sturman: And Then Every-thing Unraveled, Scholastic/Point, $16.99 16-year-old Delia Truesdale, sent from her Palo Alto home to Manhattan and the management of two aunts, refuses to believe her socially conscious mother was lost at sea. The first-person humor and romantic subplot may charm the target readership, but the mystery fizzles: psychic and off-stage detection are cop-outs, and the incomplete ending requires waiting for a sequel.

  ** Robert B. Parker: Chasing the Bear, Philomel, $14.99. How did Boston private eye Spenser's western upbringing by a widowed father and two maternal uncles turn him into the literate and principled macho man we know so well? While young readers will enjoy the suspenseful river pursuit, it's hard to imagine them relating to the framing device: present-day commentary on the action via the sleuth's customary arch dialogue with Susan Silverman.

  Copyright © 2009 by Jon L. Breen

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  ERRATUM: In our introduction to Jon L. Breen's short story “Fake Résumé” (8/09) we mistakenly attributed the quote “Breen has a gentle literary personality, and is especially good at picking up on likable characters,” to Ed Gorman. In fact, it comes from a book review by Mike Grost. See mikegrost.com/kkbeck.htm#Breen

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  Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider

  I've been doing this column for several years now, and the question that some of you might be asking yourselves is this: “Will Bill Crider ever run out of blogs to write about?” The short answer is, “No.” Why? Because in addition to all the blogs already out there, other writers are getting into the act all the time.

  You want examples? Let's begin with Joe R. Lansdale, Edgar-winning author of The Bottoms, whose latest novel is Vanilla Ride. Lansdale started his blog (joelansdale.blogspot.com) at the end of May, so it's still in the formative stages as I write this. So far, Lansdale's had some interesting publicity photos for Vanilla Ride, with his daughter, Kasey, as the model, and a couple of entries that he's written about his work in books and film. If he continues to produce entries in his inimitable style, the blog's going to be a big hit.

  Then there's Max Allan Collins. Collins does so many things so well that I can't keep up with them. Besides writing award-winning mystery novels, he writes novelizations of movies and TV series, writes scripts for graphic novels, writes and produces movies, and shows up on any number of DVDs to comment on films and serials. He even plays in a rock band. How he finds time to blog is anybody's guess, but weekly updates can be found at www.maxallancollins.com/index.html.

  Terrill Lee Lankford also writes books, including the great Earthquake Weather, and movies. Recently he's produced a three-part YouTube movie. It's called Conflict of Interest (www.youtube.com/watch?v=4b1 wAmjfNw), and it's related to Michael Connelly's new novel, The Scarecrow. Lankford has done trailers for Connelly's books, too, and you can find the links if you check out Conflict of Interest. Lankford blogs at JAFO (quixoticprod.blogspot.com).

  Of course, other writers have been on the web for a while. Laura Lippman, for one. Lippman, who probably has to have an extra room in her house for all her awards, has something she calls The Memory Project ( www.journalscape.com/LauraLippman), derived from a writing exercise “in which students are asked to take an experience and write about it as concretely as possible and see what happens.” Lippman writes about some of her own memories and encourages others to write about theirs in the comment section. She also writes about her book tours and about the writing life in general. Check it out.

  Copyright © 2009 by Bill Crider

  Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine can be found at billcrider.blogspot.com.

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  Novelette: THE CANDY-FACTORY GIRLS by Tessa de Loo

  Called “one of Europe's most accomplished novelists” by Kirkus Reviews, Dutch writer Tessa de Loo is a Soho Press author in the U.S., with two novels out so far in English: The Twins and A Bed in Heaven. She is also a superb short-story writer. In Holland, her stories have recently been reissued in a collection. The story we selected for translation for her EQMM debut is one of her most famous. It has previously been translated into a number of other languages, but never before English.

  Translated from the Dutch by Josh Pachter

  "Who wants a piece?” Cora asks.

  Her plump hand holds out the half-empty candy box, but as usual, no one pays any attention to it.

  Trix wipes a stray strand of blond hair from the corner of her mouth, but it's impossible to tell if it's hers or his. Lien struggles to light a cigarette without success. Her hands tremble.

  I just sit there, staring at them, vaguely expecting one of them to explain what's just happened, to assign some responsibility for it. Is there some special word that labels the guilt we all feel, some legal designation?

  "Well, I'll eat them, then,” Cora says, and one after another, the bonbons disappear between her scarlet lips.

  "Dammit,” says Lien, gazing at us meaningfully, each in turn, through the thick lenses of her glasses.

  We laugh nervously.

  Trix's eyes shine, the palest blue I've ever seen them. “If they start asking questions,” she whispers, “I don't know a thing about it."

  "None of us knows a thing about it.” Cora's fingers fumble with a pink wrapper. “They can ask whatever they like."

  "We never even saw him.” Lien claws her heavy glasses from her doll's nose, dramatically exposing her half-blind eyes. “Never,” she repeats with conviction. Then, as if her words have startled her, she strikes another match and touches the flame to her cigarette. This time it lights, and she coughs wildly, choking on the smoke as if she were a child experimenting with to-bacco for the very first time. Tears spill from her eyes and run down her cheeks.

  My thoughts tumble over each other feverishly, and although each of them is clear, its meaning obvious, together they cause me only confusion. Have we—although each of us has her own independent life from the moment we step down from this train, exhausted, at the end of the day, until the following morning when we drag our sleepy bodies back up the metal steps into our compartment—have we now somehow shackled ourselves together? Will the events of this morning rivet us to each other for all eternity? How can the warm sense of camaraderie which flows through me reconcile with the clammy conviction that I myself am responsible for what has happened?

  We approach our destination. The sterile landscape of arrow-straight canals will soon give way to the crazy patchwork of gardens that announce our arrival in the city. Till now, I've always shivered at the thought of having to live on one of the farms that dot this geometric no man's land. Not today, though: today the world has shrunk down to this one compartment and we four women who occupy it.

  "Before morning, one of you will betray me,” says Trix, her voice hollow, and I imagine that the look she gives me is intended to remind me that I am, after all, the newcomer in this company.

  "Don't be ridiculous!” Cora cries. “We're all in the same boat.” Same as every morning, she stuffs her empty candy box into the trash can below the window and sighs, satisfied. She's had her breakfast.

  Cora, Trix, and Lien have been riding together in this compartment for years now, way at the back of the train, at the very tip of its tail. Our compartment sticks out past the far edge of the station's roof when the train comes to a halt, as if it's not really a part of the train, as if, should it disappear while underway, no one would even notice its absence. Each morning, the first of them to arrive at the station commandeers the compartment and holds it for the rest of us, chasing away any potential trespassers.

 
; Although this daily journey is a long-standing habit for the rest of them, it's less than a month since I first joined them. After they'd gotten to know me a little at work, they'd invited me to enter their sanctum, their Holy Compartment, as if it was specially reserved just for the candy-factory girls.

  They bring to the compartment the ambiance, the intimacy, of a living room or a neighborhood cafe: Cora's inevitable box of bonbons sits in the middle of the fold-down table by the window like a pot of coffee or a bottle of gin; Lien never stops knitting for a moment; Trix stretches her long, stockinged legs across the seat and pages through a fashion magazine or gossip rag. They share their innermost thoughts back and forth, give each other advice, each laughing the loudest at her own personal misery.

  The news means less to them than the scenery that floats by outside the train's window: World events unfold outside their ability to influence them, and although of course things are always changing, their own lives remain constant, and it's pointless to pick apart situations you can't do anything about.

  The three older conductors who work this run call them “the girls.” Every day, Cora offers to share her candy with them, too, but, like us, they always refuse. Not without disgust, their eyes go back and forth between the box and Cora's overblown figure, as if she is full to her fingertips with bonbons, as if it's pure cherry liqueur that courses through her veins.

  But let one of them have a cold or seem even mildly distracted by whatever, and they gladly let Cora mother them. If she makes a comment about their beer bellies, their encroaching baldness, their potency, their protestations are rote—no real offense taken.

  Trix, the object of their eternal admiration, never hesitates to encourage it. The moment the door swings open, she poses for them coquettishly. The on-duty conductor's gaze arrows straight to the alluring passenger, then, instantly ashamed, passes on to Cora, who returns it meekly.