Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine 01/01/11
Page 14
She bent down and studied the remains of a half-eaten mouse.
“Hm,” she said. “Things can’t go on like this.”
“That’s exactly what I thought,” said the policewoman.
Marja opened the china cabinet and held a glass up to the light.
“We’ll have to sort out a place in a residential home,” she said.
Annika was feeling increasingly uncomfortable.
“Just a minute,” she broke in. “Have you spoken to Gustav? He’s managed perfectly well here for his whole life. Rather than moving him, couldn’t he be provided with a little bit of help here in the house from time to time?”
Marja threw her hands wide, a small smile playing around her lips.
“He has the right to a decent life, Annika,” she said, “just like everyone else.”
“Exactly. But all he needs for that is a little help and support.”
Marja shook her head. “This is not an acceptable environment.”
“And that’s up to you to decide on Gustav’s behalf, is it?” Annika said quietly.
The woman contemplated Annika for a little while.
“A little bit of help from time to time,” she repeated thoughtfully. “Well, that’s a possibility, of course. We could give that a try first. It would have to be someone local, someone who’s able to come and see to Gustav more or less every day. We’d need to find someone like that,” she said, her expression wise, “someone with experience who lives close by ...”
At that moment Pettersson, the other police officer, walked in with the old man trailing behind him.
“Get that trigger-happy old bastard away from me!” screamed Ingela Jönsson.
Gustav stiffened in the doorway when he saw her standing in his kitchen.
“Get that wood thief out of my house!” he yelled. “I’m not having that thieving bitch on my property!”
“Stop it!” yelled Annika. “Stop it right now! Use your brains, for pity’s sake!”
A deathly silence fell in the kitchen as five pairs of eyes stared at her; the only sound was the ticking of the clock and the crackling of the birch wood.
“It’s Christmas Day,” she said. “I don’t care whether you believe in God or not, but you ought to take that as a sign. If you can just use a little bit of sense and show a little bit of tolerance, you can sort this out. Otherwise you’re both screwed,” she said, looking first at Gustav and then at Ingela.
“What are you talking about?” Ingela said stupidly.
“You two are the solution to each other’s problems,” said Annika.
She quickly pushed past Ingela Jönsson and Old Gustav, stopped by the door, and confronted their surprised looks.
“It’s up to you now,” she said as she closed the door behind her and stepped out into the snow.
Copyright © 2010 by Liza Marklund; translation © 2010 by Marlaine Delargy. Published by agreement with Salomonsson Agency.
Reviews
Reviews
THE JURY BOX
By Jon L. Breen
What better way to kick off EQMM’s seventieth anniversary year than to celebrate one of the magazine’s most important contributions to mystery literature, the Department of First Stories? Beginning...
BLOG BYTES
By Bill Crider
If you’re a fan of the works of the late John D. MacDonald (and I certainly am), you’ll enjoy spending some time at a blog called The Trap of Solid Gold (http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.com), which...
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Passport to Crime Department of First Stories
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THE JURY BOX
By Jon L. Breen
What better way to kick off EQMM’s seventieth anniversary year than to celebrate one of the magazine’s most important contributions to mystery literature, the Department of First Stories? Beginning with founding editor EQ (Frederic Dannay) and continuing with successors Eleanor Sullivan and Janet Hutchings, new writers have been sought, encouraged, and nurtured. Among the hundreds who got their fiction-writing start in these pages are James Yaffe, Jack Finney, Harry Kemelman, Stanley Ellin, Thomas Flanagan, Robert Irvine, Joyce Harrington, Dick Lochte, Francis M. Nevins, David Morell, Brendan DuBois, Laura Benedict, and Steven Saylor. Six new books by past EQMM debutantes are considered below, followed by a few seasonal mysteries for your holiday consideration.
*** William Link: The Columbo Collection, Crippen & Landru, $18 trade paper, $45 signed limited hard-cover. Los Angeles police Lieutenant Columbo, arguably the greatest fictional detective originally created for television, appears in a dozen sharply plotted and written new stories, all in the inverted tradition, by surviving co-creator Link, whose first story with long-time collaborator Richard Levinson appeared in the November 1954 issue.
*** Susan Dunlap: Power Slide, Counterpoint, $25. In her fourth adventure, San Franciscan Darcy Lott, Zen Buddhist and motion-picture stuntwoman, seeks the truth about two men in her life: a murdered fellow stunt double and sometime lover, and her brother Mike, who disappeared twenty years before. Both are solved surprisingly and satisfactorily in a typically fine job from an undervalued writer. (First story March 1978.)
*** Dennis Palumbo: Mirror Image, Poisoned Pen, $24.95. A screenwriter turned psychotherapist draws on both areas of expertise in the first novel about Pittsburgh police consultant Dr. Daniel Rinaldi, one of whose crime-victim patients is murdered while dressed in imitation of his psychologist. The short-chapter, multi-reversal thriller offers much better prose, dialogue, and characterization than many bestsellers’ products and concludes with well-clued and deftly executed finishing twists. (First story April 1978.)
*** Nancy Pickard: The Scent of Rain and Lightning, Ballantine, $25. In an enthralling hybrid of whodunit, romantic suspense, and family saga, the eldest son of wealthy Kansas ranchers is murdered in 1986, and the loose-cannon ranch hand convicted of the crime, who always swore he was innocent, is released in 2009. Pickard uses the rural background to great effect and keeps the reader guessing. (First story December 2, 1981.)
*** Martin Edwards: The Serpent Pool, Poisoned Pen, $24.95. Cold case DCI Hannah Scarlett and historian Daniel Kind return for their fourth case set in England’s Lake District, a story strong on puzzle plotting, setting, and interpersonal complications. Could the years-before drowning of a young woman and the present-day burning of a book collector possibly be suicides? Coincidentally, Kind’s current research interest, De Quincey’s satirical 1827 essay On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, is available in a new small-format hardcover (Oneworld Classics/Trafalgar, $15.95). (First story August 1991.)
** John F. Dobbyn: Frame-Up, Oceanview, $24.95. In their second book-length case, the Boston law firm of Lex Devlin (old, wise) and Michael Knight (young, daring) agree to defend a mafioso’s son, accused of the car-bombing murder of a mob lawyer. In the Perry Mason tradition of fast-paced legerdemain in and (mostly) out of court, the plot is preposterous but involving. As in many recent novels, unnecessary shifting between first and third person does not serve the story well. But Dobbyn is an entertaining, inventive writer I’ll keep reading. (First Devlin and Knight story June 1994.)
*** Margaret Maron: Christmas Mourning, Grand Central, $25.99. The best of the holiday mystery crop is also, despite some tragic subject matter, the cheeriest, thanks to the huge extended family of North Carolina’s Judge Deborah Knott. The most recent victim in a troubling series of teenage highway deaths is a beautiful cheerleader who never drank alcoholic beverages or used drugs but had both in her system. The apt epigraphs, a specialty of this author, are drawn from Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. In a time of punning titles, it’s amazing no one came up with this one sooner.
*** Simon Brett: The Shooting in the Shop, Five Star, $25.95. In the English village of Fethering, amateur sleuths Carole Seddon (introvert Home Office retiree) and neighbor Jude (extrovert New Age healer) investigate Yuletide murder with eccentric l
ocals and theatrical outsiders among the well-drawn suspects. For over thirty years, Brett has been one of the most amusing and reliable pure entertainers in the crime fiction field.
** Susan Wittig Albert: Holly Blues, Berkley, $24.95. Though Christmassy as they come, the latest adventure for China Bayles, herb shop owner in Pecan City, Texas, was published in April. Common cozy characteristics—large cast of continuing characters, extensive misery-filled back story, slight and slow-developing mystery plot that comes up a twist short—are made palatable by good-humored narrative, likable people, and a wealth of holly lore.
** M.C. Beaton: Busy Body, Minotaur, $24.99. Cotswolds P.I. Agatha Raisin looks into the murder of a much-disliked Health and Safety Officer whose offenses include declaring the traditional church-top Christmas tree a public menace. When the second murder signals itself with a broad wink to experienced mystery readers, it’s clear this is a send-up of the classical whodunit, and the very obvious clue that clears everything up is in the same spirit.
** Anne Perry: A Christmas Odyssey, Ballantine, $18. The holiday novella, a minor annual feature of the author’s massive oeuvre, this time features Henry Rathbone and Squeaky Robinson from the William Monk series seeking the scion of a wealthy family in the darkest corners of Victorian London’s underworld. The writing is as fine as ever, the background grimly Dickensian, but the thin plot and sentimental conclusion may limit the readership to Perry completists.
Otto Penzler’s Christmas at the Mysterious Bookshop (Vanguard, $24.95) collects 17 holiday stories originally published singly as gifts for customers of his Manhattan store. Inside jokes abound, and mystery writers, collectors, dealers, editors, and fans will love it. The stories by Edward D. Hoch, Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake, and Lawrence Block have been reprinted elsewhere, but most of the others, by top names like Anne Perry, Thomas H. Cook, and Mary Higgins Clark, have not. S.J. Rozan’s pun-filled and cunningly plotted “The Grift of the Magi” mentions a baseball whodunit called Take Me Out at the Ball Game and includes this deathless narrative: “His eyes smoldered. I wondered why they didn’t set fire to his face.”
An even better holiday gift for historically-minded mystery buffs is Penzler’s thousand-page-plus anthology The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories (Vintage/Black Lizard, $25.00), containing mostly unfamiliar material, along with a historical introduction by Keith Alan Deutsch and biographical notes on the authors. All the great names are present, among them Dashiell Hammett, Cornell Woolrich, Raoul Whitfield, Frederick Nebel, Erle Stanley Gardner, Raymond Chandler, Carroll John Daly, Fredric Brown, George Harmon Coxe, William Campbell Gault, Horace McCoy, Norbert Davis, Richard Deming, and John D. MacDonald. In 1953, Black Mask-style selections became a feature of this magazine, as they are again today.
Copyright © 2010 Jon L. Breen
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BLOG BYTES
By Bill Crider
If you’re a fan of the works of the late John D. MacDonald (and I certainly am), you’ll enjoy spending some time at a blog called The Trap of Solid Gold (http://thetrapofsolidgold.blogspot.com), which is named for one of MacDonald’s best short stories. In fact, readers of EQMM should particularly enjoy the blog because it’s devoted not to JDM’s novels but to his short stories, of which there are an abundance. The blogger is Steve Scott, who worked with Walter and Jean Shine in compiling the definitive JDM bibliography. Scott has a large collection of magazines containing stories by JDM, many of which have never been reprinted, and he discusses the stories in depth. The discussions are accompanied by cover scans from the magazines where the stories first appeared. Recent reviews have included “College Man” from the February 1958 issue of Cosmopolitan, which happens to have a lovely photo of Sophia Loren on the cover, and “Money Green” from the May 1950 issue of Fifteen Sports Stories. (I’d love to own this issue, as the cover indicates that it also includes stories by William R. Cox and William Campbell Gault.) Scott’s review even includes a scan of the interior illustration for the story. There’s enough material on the blog to occupy you for quite some time if you have an interest in MacDonald. Or even if you don’t.
The Debrief (http://jeremyduns.blogspot.com) is “the online playground of spy novelist Jeremy Duns.” Duns is the author of Free Agent and Free Country, two well-received espionage novels, and among other things on his blog he has different writers talk about their favorite thrillers. For example, Tom Cain discusses Wilbur Smith’s The Leopard Hunts in Darkness, Meg Gardiner chooses Seven Days in May, and Matt Hilton picks David Morrell’s The Brotherhood of the Rose. Duns on his own talks about how he writes the thriller, his experience at the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival, and, of course, his novels. All interesting stuff.
Gerard Saylor is a librarian in southern Wisconsin, and he does reviews of mystery and crime fiction at Books Are For Squares (http://booksareforsquares.blogspot.com). The reviews are short, informal (Saylor claims that “grammatical errors are common,” though they really aren’t), and honest, sometimes to the point of “forced myself to finish.” The reviews are often plot summaries followed by Saylor’s “comments” on the books. Disclaimer: Saylor has reviewed my books favorably on this blog, so naturally I think he has good taste.
Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Magazine can be found at http://billcrider.blogspot.com
Copyright © 2010 by Bill Crider
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Department of First Stories
A GOOD MAN OF BUSINESS
By David H. Ingram
Although he has had one previous fiction publication in a small-press literary magazine (The First Line), this is David H. Ingram’s first appearance in a national magazine and his first mystery. The...
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Reviews Black Mask
Department of First Stories
A GOOD MAN OF BUSINESS
By David H. Ingram
Although he has had one previous fiction publication in a small-press literary magazine (The First Line), this is David H. Ingram’s first appearance in a national magazine and his first mystery. The St. Louis author is also a playwright, several of whose plays have been performed and published. He recently completed his first novel, a mystery set during a mayoral election, and has begun its sequel. His story makes a fine beginning to this department’s selections for our 70th-anniversary year.
Blinking lights, silver garlands, and boxes wrapped in paper decorated with jovial Santa Clauses, bound and bowed with satin ribbons, all mixed in among the bottles filling the mirrored shelves behind the bar at Jimmy’s Tavern.
I’ll be glad when this yearly mania is over, thought H. Sullivan Gleason, sipping his whiskey sour. December twenty-sixth was three days away but it couldn’t come soon enough for him. The psychotic joviality that gripped people at Christmastime drove him crazy. Like the idiots in the corner booth, singing Christmas carols with drunken abandon, the words slurred and half-forgotten but shouted boisterously nonetheless.
Gleason drained his drink and held up the empty glass for Emma, the bartender, to see. From halfway down the bar, she raised her index finger while smiling apologetically. Simple sign language was the only way to communicate, what with the Scotch and Soda Boys’ Choir in the corner.
Gleason glanced over his shoulder at the revelers. “I wish God would rest every merry gentleman in this damn room!”
“You misplaced the comma,” a voice beside him said.
“Hmmm?” he said, turning on his barstool. “What’s that?”
The man occupying the spot next to Gleason wore a three-piece charcoal-gray suit with a tri-fold in the breast pocket, his silk paisley tie carefully knotted, his black wingtips shining even in the dimly lit bar. Gleason placed the man in his mid fifties, much older than his own age of thirty-four, though he wouldn’t mind a similar head of dense black hair, brushed with a touch of silver at the temples, when he reached that age
. However, the man’s most stunning features were his ice-blue eyes.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man said. “Occasionally my tongue wags before I consider how my words might strike the listener. I said, you misplaced the comma, which could be pompous or plain rude, depending upon how it’s received. So, please accept my apology.”
“No offense taken.” The man’s English accent made Gleason smile. “I’m curious, though. What do you mean about the comma?”
“The song’s title is ‘God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.’ The comma is after the ‘merry.’ It’s like wishing a person pleasant dreams, though we English always take extra words to do it. The gentlemen in question could be morose, sullen, or obstinate. Merriment is not a requirement.”
He’s right, Gleason thought, that is damn pompous, but it sounds so good with his accent. “That’s interesting, Mr....?”
“Noel’s my name, Charles Noel. And you are?”
“H. Sullivan Gleason, but please call me Sully. All my friends do.”
Noel smiled as they shook hands. “Thank you for that distinction, Sully.”
“What line of business are you in, Charles?”
“I’m in charge of North American accounts for Chapman and Hall Assurance of London. It means I spend time on both sides of the pond.” From a thin gold case, Noel carefully withdrew a business card, pinching it by the edges, and handed it to Gleason. The cursive script read:
Chapman and Hall
16 Bayham St
Camden Town
London NW1
In the corner was printed: Charles Noel, V.P., North American Operations.
“I hope your year was better than mine,” Gleason said, sticking the card in his pocket. “I’m the Midwest regional manager for Bradbury, Evans, and Sim.”
The carolers finished a jangling version of “Jingle Bells” and moved on to “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”