AHMM, April 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Patrick followed behind them, still complaining.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Gilbert M. Stack

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  BOOKED & PRINTED by ROBERT C. HAHN

  It is always a pleasure to discover promising new authors. This month three highly polished first novels display a range of styles and subject matter.

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  Current fashion in thrillers leans toward terrorism and cataclysmic events that threaten cities, countries, or even the entire world. Marcus Sakey's universe in THE BLADE ITSELF (St. Martin's, $22.95), in contrast, can be boiled down to a struggle between two men, childhood friends, seeking to impose their will on one another in a desperately escalating struggle.

  The stakes are only relatively small. Evan McCann wants payback and a new stake to start living again after seven plus years in prison. Danny Carter has used that same length of time to build a straight career in construction, develop a solid relationship with a woman, and leave his old life in “the life” behind.

  As childhood buddies growing up rough in Chicago, Evan and Danny progressed from pranks to auto theft and finally to a badly botched robbery that resulted in Danny's narrow escape and Evan's first serious sentence. Following their street code, Evan never implicated Danny.

  The seven years apart greatly changed the two friends. When he emerges from prison, Evan is hardened physically and emotionally into a brutal and ruthless schemer. Danny has become a man of possessions, position, and responsibilities—in other words a man who is vulnerable because he has much to lose.

  The concept is clever, the execution enthralling as the two former friends jockey back and forth. Sakey manages the difficult task of staking out strong positions for both men: Evan tries to force Danny back to the life he once led while Danny tries to give Evan just enough to get him out of his life. Their struggle begins like two dogs circling each other, trying to establish dominance without actually fighting, and grows into a desperate conflict that only one can survive.

  Sakey has worked as a freelance advertising copywriter, but it is obvious after this debut that he has found a better calling as a novelist. The Blade Itself is not the first of a series, but readers who delve into its pages will undoubtedly want to see what Sakey creates as a follow-up.

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  Jack Fredrickson's debut novel also takes place in Chicago and also involves construction in a way, but the two novels are vastly different. In Fredrickson's A SAFE PLACE FOR DYING (St. Martin's, $23.95) a failed private eye is pressured into service to prevent disaster in an ultra-safe gated community. Fredrickson's strong suit is humor, and in Vlodek Elstrom, better known as Dek, he has created a reluctant private eye who is engaging, sympathetic, and eventually effective.

  Dek has gone from living in one of Chicago's oldest and most impressive gated communities, a development known as Crystal Waters (a k a Gateville), to being sole occupant of a weird structure resembling the turret of a castle that he is trying to restore. The reason for his dismissal from the opulence of Crystal Waters is his divorce from Amanda Phelps—she kept her wealth and house, and Dek kept little more than a jelly jar, a jeep, and a small savings account.

  Dek is drawn back to Gateville after an explosion destroys one of Gateville's multimillion-dollar mansions and the community's residents receive an extortion letter. They fear that a police investigation of the matter will have an adverse affect on their property values.

  Dek is willing to take the money and the job because Amanda's home is one of the houses that may be at risk, and he's still very much in love with her. The first explosion isn't the only one, and Dek soon finds himself in over his head, and as soon as the police and the A.T.F. get involved, as they inevitably do, he also finds himself a prime suspect. Before the case is over, Dek will get a chance to prove his mettle in ways that will astound him and perhaps win back the love of his life.

  Fredrickson shows a deft hand at creating colorful characters, such as “provenance specialist” Leo Brumsky, who earns four hundred thousand dollars a year but lives in the basement of his mother's brick bungalow, and the building commissioner named Elvis, who is one of the many problems Dek has to contend with while trying to restore his home. Fredrickson maintains a snappy pace, delivers a very credible plot, and introduces readers to an amusing and highly promising new detective.

  Our third debut, Sandi Ault's WILD INDIGO (Berkley Prime Crime, $23.95) is set not in the urban wilds of Chicago but rather in Colorado mountain country, and it features a heroine who will put readers in mind of Tony Hillerman's Leaphorn and Chee as well as Nevada Barr's Anna Pigeon. Wild Indigo introduces Jamaica Wild, and she has a unique and lovely voice all her own.

  Jamaica Wild is a Bureau of Land Management (BLM) resource protection agent, and she is both a loner and a woman with an intense longing to belong. Strong yet vulnerable, she arouses powerful feelings—good and bad—in many of the people she deals with.

  Jamaica's status as an outsider is clear from the opening scene, when she watches helplessly as Pueblo dweller Jerome Santana is trampled to death by a herd of buffalo.

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  Despite her “adoption” by Momma Anna of the Tanoah Pueblo, who is teaching her some of the people's ways, Jamaica remains an outsider to many members of the tribe. In fact, Jamaica's closest relationship is not with a human at all, but rather with her wolf cub, Mountain, whose dependency on her creates a remarkable bond and some unusual problems.

  She is stunned when accusations that her actions may have caused Santana's death result in her suspension from the BLM. In order to absolve herself in the case of Santana's death, Jamaica needs to locate a missing witness, a young pueblo boy. Jamaica has to figure out where he might have gone, and finding him will test her strength and will to the limits of endurance.

  Ault's fluid writing allows her to weave Native American lore, traditions, and mysticism into her narrative naturally and effectively. Jamaica Wild is a name that seems to conjure a free spirit, and in her debut she certainly lives up to that suggestion.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Robert C. Hahn

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  MYSTERY CLASSIC: THE KNIGHT'S CROSS SIGNAL PROBLEM by ERNEST BRAMAH

  "Louis,” exclaimed Mr. Carrados, with the air of genial gaiety that Carlyle had found so incongruous to his conception of a blind man, “you have a mystery somewhere about you! I know it by your step."

  Nearly a month had passed since the incident of the false Dionysius had led to the two men meeting. It was now December. Whatever Mr. Carlyle's step might indicate to the inner eye it betokened to the casual observer the manner of a crisp, alert, self-possessed man of business. Carlyle, in truth, betrayed nothing of the pessimism and despondency that had marked him on the earlier occasion.

  "You have only yourself to thank that it is a very poor one,” he retorted. “If you hadn't held me to a hasty promise—"

  "To give me an option on the next case that baffled you, no matter what it was—"

  "Just so. The consequence is that you get a very unsatisfactory affair that has no special interest to an amateur and is only baffling because it is—well—"

  "Well, baffling?"

  "Exactly, Max. Your would-be jest has discovered the proverbial truth. I need hardly tell you that it is only the insoluble that is finally baffling and this is very probably insoluble. You remember the awful smash on the Central and Suburban at Knight's Cross Station a few weeks ago?"

  "Yes,” replied Carrados, with interest. “I read the whole ghastly details at the time."

  "You read?” exclaimed his friend suspiciously.

  "I still use the familiar phrases,” explained Carrados, with a smile. “As a matter of fact, my secretary reads to me. I mark what I want to hear and when he comes at ten o'clock we clear off the morning papers in no time."

  "And how do you know what to mark?” demanded Mr. Carlyle cunningly. />
  Carrados's right hand, lying idly on the table, moved to a newspaper near. He ran his finger along a column heading, his eyes still turned towards his visitor.

  "'The Money Market. Continued from page 2. British Railways,'” he announced.

  "Extraordinary,” murmured Carlyle.

  "Not very,” said Carrados. “If someone dipped a stick in treacle and wrote ‘Rats’ across a marble slab you would probably be able to distinguish what was there, blindfold."

  "Probably,” admitted Mr. Carlyle. “At all events we will not test the experiment."

  "The difference to you of treacle on a marble background is scarcely greater than that of printers’ ink on newspaper to me. But anything smaller than pica I do not read with comfort, and below long primer I cannot read at all. Hence the secretary. Now the accident, Louis."

  "The accident: well, you remember all about that. An ordinary Central and Suburban passenger train, non-stop at Knight's Cross, ran past the signal and crashed into a crowded electric train that was just beginning to move out. It was like sending a garden roller down a row of handlights. Two carriages of the electric train were flattened out of existence; the next two were broken up. For the first time on an English railway there was a good stand-up smash between a heavy steam-engine and a train of light cars, and it was ‘bad for the coo.’”

  "Twenty-seven killed, forty something injured, eight died since,” commented Carrados.

  "That was bad for the Co.,” said Carlyle. “Well, the main fact was plain enough. The heavy train was in the wrong. But was the engine-driver responsible? He claimed, and he claimed vehemently from the first, and he never varied one iota, that he had a ‘clear’ signal—that is to say, the green light, it being dark. The signalman concerned was equally dogged that he never pulled off the signal—that it was at ‘danger’ when the accident happened and that it had been for five minutes before. Obviously, they could not both be right."

  "Why, Louis?” asked Mr. Carrados smoothly.

  "The signal must either have been up or down—red or green."

  "Did you ever notice the signals on the Great Northern Railway, Louis?"

  "Not particularly. Why?"

  "One winterly day, about the year when you and I were concerned in being born, the engine-driver of a Scotch express received the ‘clear’ from a signal near a little Huntingdon station called Abbots Ripton. He went on and crashed into a goods train and into the thick of the smash a down express mowed its way. Thirteen killed and the usual tale of injured. He was positive that the signal gave him a ‘clear'; the signalman was equally confident that he had never pulled it off the ‘danger.’ Both were right, and yet the signal was in working order. As I said, it was a winterly day; it had been snowing hard and the snow froze and accumulated on the upper edge of the signal arm until its weight bore it down. That is a fact that no fiction writer dare have invented, but to this day every signal on the Great Northern pivots from the centre of the arm instead of from the end, in memory of that snowstorm."

  "That came out at the inquest, I presume?” said Mr. Carlyle. “We have had the Board of Trade inquiry and the inquest here and no explanation is forthcoming. Everything was in perfect order. It rests between the word of the signalman and the word of the engine-driver—not a jot of direct evidence either way. Which is right?"

  "That is what you are going to find out, Louis?” suggested Carrados.

  "It is what I am being paid for finding out,” admitted Mr. Carlyle frankly. “But so far we are just where the inquest left it, and, between ourselves, I candidly can't see an inch in front of my face in the matter."

  "Nor can I,” said the blind man, with a rather wry smile. “Never mind. The engine-driver is your client, of course?"

  "Yes,” admitted Carlyle. “But how the deuce did you know?"

  "Let us say that your sympathies are enlisted on his behalf. The jury were inclined to exonerate the signalman, weren't they? What has the company done with your man?"

  "Both are suspended. Hutchins, the driver, hears that he may probably be given charge of a lavatory at one of the stations. He is a decent, bluff, short-spoken old chap, with his heart in his work. Just now you'll find him at his worst—bitter and suspicious. The thought of swabbing down a lavatory and taking pennies all day is poisoning him."

  "Naturally. Well, there we have honest Hutchins: taciturn, a little touchy perhaps, grown grey in the service of the company, and manifesting quite a bulldog-like devotion to his favourite 538."

  "Why, that actually was the number of his engine—how do you know it?” demanded Carlyle sharply.

  "It was mentioned two or three times at the inquest, Louis,” replied Carrados mildly.

  "And you remembered—with no reason to?"

  "You can generally trust a blind man's memory, especially if he has taken the trouble to develop it."

  "Then you will remember that Hutchins did not make a very good impression at the time. He was surly and irritable under the ordeal. I want you to see the case from all sides."

  "He called the signalman—Mead—a ‘lying young dog,’ across the room, I believe. Now, Mead, what is he like? You have seen him, of course?"

  "Yes. He does not impress me favourably. He is glib, ingratiating, and distinctly ‘greasy.’ He has a ready answer for everything almost before the question is out of your mouth. He has thought of everything."

  "And now you are going to tell me something, Louis,” said Carrados encouragingly.

  Mr. Carlyle laughed a little to cover an involuntary movement of surprise.

  "There is a suggestive line that was not touched at the inquiries,” he admitted. “Hutchins has been a saving man all his life, and he has received good wages. Among his class he is regarded as wealthy. I daresay that he has five hundred pounds in the bank. He is a widower with one daughter, a very nice-mannered girl of about twenty. Mead is a young man, and he and the girl are sweethearts—have been informally engaged for some time. But old Hutchins would not hear of it; he seems to have taken a dislike to the signalman from the first, and latterly he had forbidden him to come to his house or his daughter to speak to him."

  "Excellent, Louis,” cried Carrados in great delight. “We shall clear your man in a blaze of red and green lights yet and hang the glib, ‘greasy’ signalman from his own signal-post."

  "It is a significant fact, seriously?"

  "It is absolutely convincing."

  "It may have been a slip, a mental lapse on Mead's part which he discovered the moment it was too late, and then, being too cowardly to admit his fault, and having so much at stake, he took care to make detection impossible. It may have been that, but my idea is rather that probably it was neither quite pure accident nor pure design. I can imagine Mead meanly pluming himself over the fact that the life of this man who stands in his way, and whom he must cordially dislike, lies in his power. I can imagine the idea becoming an obsession as he dwells on it. A dozen times with his hand on the lever he lets his mind explore the possibilities of a moment's defection. Then one day he pulls the signal off in sheer bravado—and hastily puts it at danger again. He may have done it once or he may have done it oftener before he was caught in a fatal moment of irresolution. The chances are about even that the engine-driver would be killed. In any case he would be disgraced, for it is easier on the face of it to believe that man might run past a danger signal in absentmindedness, without noticing it, than that a man should pull off a signal and replace it without being conscious of his actions."

  "The fireman was killed. Does your theory involve the certainty of the fireman being killed, Louis?"

  "No,” said Carlyle. “The fireman is a difficulty, but looking at it from Mead's point of view—whether he has been guilty of an error or a crime—it resolves itself into this: First, the fireman may be killed. Second, he may not notice the signal at all. Third, in any case he will loyally corroborate his driver and the good old jury will discount that."

  Carrados smoked thoughtfu
lly, his open, sightless eyes merely appearing to be set in a tranquil gaze across the room.

  "It would not be an improbable explanation,” he said presently. “Ninety-nine men out of a hundred would say: ‘People do not do these things.’ But you and I, who have in our different ways studied criminology, know that they sometimes do, or else there would be no curious crimes. What have you done on that line?"

  To anyone who could see, Mr. Carlyle's expression conveyed an answer.

  "You are behind the scenes, Max. What was there for me to do? Still I must do something for my money. Well, I have had a very close inquiry made confidentially among the men. There might be a whisper of one of them knowing more than had come out—a man restrained by friendship, or enmity, or even grade jealousy. Nothing came of that. Then there was the remote chance that some private person had noticed the signal without attaching any importance to it then, one who would be able to identify it still by something associated with the time. I went over the line myself. Opposite the signal the line on one side is shut in by a high blank wall; on the other side are houses, but coming below the butt-end of a scullery the signal does not happen to be visible from any road or from any window."

  "My poor Louis!” said Carrados, in friendly ridicule. “You were at the end of your tether?"

  "I was,” admitted Carlyle. “And now that you know the sort of job it is I don't suppose that you are keen on wasting your time over it."

  "That would hardly be fair, would it?” said Carrados reasonably. “No, Louis, I will take over your honest old driver and your greasy young signalman and your fatal signal that cannot be seen from anywhere."

  "But it is an important point for you to remember, Max, that although the signal cannot be seen from the box, if the mechanism had gone wrong, or anyone tampered with the arm, the automatic indicator would at once have told Mead that the green light was showing. Oh, I have gone very thoroughly into the technical points, I assure you."

  "I must do so too,” commented Mr. Carrados gravely.