by Otto Penzler
I think probably the idea for “The Power of Suggestion” first came to me as I watched one of those TV commercials for psychics, and I began to solve the mystery in my mind of how a woman could convince her husband that she was psychic.
Donald E. Westlake was born many years ago in the dorp of Brooklyn, New York, but was raised in exile in Albany, also in the great state of New York. He began telling lies at an early age, then figured out how to do so at a profit, and has never looked back. Telling lies for money, he has published over seventy novels, been credited (or debited) with five produced screenplays, and filled the interstices with short stories, criticism, and the occasional essay (aka occasional occasional). The only flaw in his happy existence is that he now finds it impossible to lie for free.
■ It was a dark and stormy night. Fortunately, I was indoors, at a party that had something to do, as I recall (or, more accurately, do not recall), with the Mystery Writers of America. As in uffish thought I stood, Mary Higgins Clark approached to say that she and Liz Smith were assembling a collection of original short stories to be published in a book called The Plot Thickens to raise money in aid of literacy. Now, if it weren’t for a general run of literacy in this world I have no idea what would have become of me (farmhand, perhaps, losing limbs one at a time), so that was a charity I felt I could wholeheartedly support. Also, I have been grateful to Mary for some time for her having wrested the annual Edgar Awards dinner out of its church-basement-supper era and brought it to a height of splendid occasion. So I said yes. So she told me the gimmick: All the stories had to contain a thick book, a thick fog, and a thick steak. So I went away and mused, and wondered if I could do a switcheroo with one of those elements: “Stake” instead of “steak,” for instance, as in “through the heart.” But then it came to me to use “stake” in another way, and do the switcheroo on a different requirement. Thus the story pratfell into existence, and here it is. And isn’t it nice that we are all literate.
A native of Mississippi, Steve Yarbrough lives in Fresno, California, where he is professor of English at California State University, Fresno. He is the author of the short story collections Veneer (due out in the fall of 1998), Mississippi History, and Family Men. His novel The Oxygen Man will be published in 1999. His stories and essays have been published in many journals and magazines, and he has won a Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
■ In 1996 Kathleen Kennedy, who produced such movies as The Color Purple and E.T., read an essay of mine about southerners and guns and got interested in my work. I went down to L.A. and had a meeting with her, and before too long her production company had optioned an unpublished novel of mine called The Oxygen Man and hired me to do the screenplay for it.
The novel has two time frames several years apart, and many of my struggles with the screenplay involved either cutting out material from the past or trying to find a way to work that material into the present action. “The Rest of Her Life” is the first piece of fiction I wrote after finishing the filmscript. The structure of the story, in which most of the action takes place in the past, probably grew out of my impatience with the limitations screenwriting placed on me.
Other Distinguished Mystery Stories uf 1997
Aggeler, Geo
The Fire. South Dakota Review, Spring Andrews, Tom
Torch Song. Hardboiled, no. 23 Axtmann, Frederick
Line of Sight. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, July/August
Bankier, William A Gift of Murder. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, February Barnes, Eric The Huts. Greensboro Review, Summer Blain, W. Edward ,
Driscoll Henley’s Last Day. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, August Block, Lynne Wood, and Lawrence Block
The Burglar Who Smelled Smoke. Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine, Summer/Fall
Caldwell, Bo
His Moods. Story Magazine, Winter Coben, Harlan
Entrapped. Mary Higgins Clark Mystery Magazine, Spring Cohen, Stephanie Kaplan Lady Luck. Hardboiled, no. 23 COMBA, GRETCHEN
The Friction Point. Greensboro Review, Summer Crenshaw, Bill
Roadkill Poker. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, April
Deaver,Jeffrey
Double Jeopardy. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, September/October
Other Distinguished Mystery Stories of 1997
Defilippi, James A Fog of Many Colors. New Mystery, Summer Dubois, Brendan Trade Wars. Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, February
345
Fako, Edward
Drunks. Antioch Review, Winter
Gallagher, Tess
My Gun. Kenyon Review, Spring
Hamilton, Steve The Silence. Pirate Writings 5, no. 2
Jance, J. A.
One Good Turn. Vengeance Is Hers, ed. Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins (Signet)
Jones, Suzanne
Shifter. Ellery Queen ’5 Mystery Magazine, April Jones, Thom
Tarantula. Zoetrope, Winter
Link, William The Good Samaritan. Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, August
McClintock, Malcolm
Kelso at the Voodoo Museum. Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, February
Nicholas, Mark A $5,000 Proposal. Cold Drill, ed. Kent Anderson (Boise State) Novakovich, Jos ip Crimson. Manoa, Winter
Oates, Joyce Carol Lover. Granta, Summer
Pike, Earl C.
The Magician’s Wife. Whiskey Island, Summer/Fall
Saylor, Steven The White Fawn. Classical Whodunnits, ed. Mike Ashley (Carroll 8c Graf)
Weinberg, Robert, and Lois H. Gresh
The Adventure of the Parisian Gentleman. The Mammoth Book of New Sherlock Holmes Adventures, ed. Mike Ashley (Carroll 8c Graf)
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