Short Story Wednesday: Feuille D'Album by Katherine Mansfield

 

I discovered this story accidentally when I ran across some short story collections by Katherine Mansfield on Amazon. I had not read anything else by Katherine Mansfield and I looked for one of her stories to try out online. This was the first one I found.

"Feuille D'Album" 

The setting is Paris. The story was published first in The New Age in 1917, under the title of "An Album Leaf." A revised version later appeared in Bliss and Other Stories, a collection published in 1920.

A young man is noticed by several women. He looks sad and forlorn and seems very shy. Various women approach him, try to befriend him. He is civil but not really interested in them so they finally give up on him. 

The story continues on to describe the young man and his life in a small studio at the top of a tall building. Eventually he notices a young woman about his age who lives in a small shabby house across the way from his small studio. From this distance he falls in love with her and imagines what her life is like. The story has a nice, ambiguous ending.

Mansfield's descriptive writing is lovely in this story. Here is an example:

He lived at the top of a tall mournful building overlooking the river. One of those buildings that look so romantic on rainy nights and moonlight nights, when the shutters are shut, and the heavy door, and the sign advertising "a little apartment to let immediately" gleams forlorn beyond words. One of those buildings that smell so unromantic all the year round, and where the concierge lives in a glass cage on the ground floor, wrapped up in a filthy shawl, stirring something in a saucepan and ladling out tit-bits to the swollen old dog lolling on a bead cushion. . . . Perched up in the air the studio had a wonderful view. The two big windows faced the water; he could see the boats and the barges swinging up and down, and the fringe of an island planted with trees, like a round bouquet.

The story was very short and simple and I liked it. At first I saw it as a slice of life story, but later decided it may be too romantic or imaginative to be categorized that way.

I found a copy of the story online here.

I later discovered that I already own a Kindle version of The Garden Party and Other Stories, with an introduction by Colm Toibin. I also recently purchased a Kindle copy of The Complete Short Stories by Katherine Mansfield, and I read an additional story from Bliss and Other Stories, titled "The Dill Pickle." That story was sadder, and more serious, than "Feuille D'Album." It was about a man and a woman who meet unexpectedly after not having seen each other for six years. Their memories of the time they spent together when they were younger are different. I enjoyed that story equally as well. I am motivated to read more stories by Mansfield and will look for a print copy of one of her short story collections soon.

Short Story Wednesday: "Kill Now—Pay Later" by Rex Stout

 

I read "Kill Now—Pay Later" in June, I think. Or it may have been early July. I have been having trouble reading short stories lately. This is one of the mystery novellas starring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. The length was 70 pages. It is one of three stories in Trio for Blunt Instruments by Rex Stout, published in 1964.

This is how the  story begins:

That Monday morning Pete didn’t give me his usual polite grin, contrasting the white gleam of his teeth with the maple-syrup shade of the skin of his square leathery face. He did give me his usual greeting, “Hi-ho, Mr. Goodwin,” but with no grin in his voice either, and he ignored the established fact that I expected to take his cap and jacket and put them on the rack. By the time I turned from shutting the door he had dropped his jacket on the hall bench and was picking up his box, which he had put on the floor to free his hands for the jacket.

“You’re an hour early,” I said. “They going barefoot?”

 “Naw, they’re busy,” he said, and headed down the hall to the office. I followed, snubbed; after all, we had been friends for more than three years.

Pete came three days a week—Monday, Wednesday, and Friday—around noon, after he had finished his rounds in an office building on Eighth Avenue. Wolfe always gave him a dollar, since it was a five-minute walk for him to the old brownstone on West 35th Street, and I only gave him a quarter, but he gave my shoes as good a shine as he did Wolfe’s. None better. I never pretended to keep busy while he was working on Wolfe because I liked to listen. It was instructive. Wolfe’s line was that a man who had been born in Greece, even though he had left at the age of six, should be familiar with the ancient glories of his native land, and he had been hammering away at Pete for forty months. That morning, as Wolfe swiveled his oversized chair, in which he was seated behind his desk, and Pete knelt and got his box in place, and I crossed to my desk, Wolfe demanded, “Who was Eratosthenes and who accused him of murder in a great and famous speech in four-oh-three B.C.?”

 

Pete Vassos is a bootblack. He had walked into the office of Dennis Ashby, vice-president of Mercer's Bobbin's, for his first scheduled appointment of the day, and the room was empty. He looked out the office window to the street below and saw a man's body on the sidewalk, with police around the body. It was his client, and Pete left the building and came directly to Nero Wolfe's office. When he described the situation, Wolfe tells him to go the police immediately. Pete is clearly perturbed and leaves.

A day later, Pete's daughter, Elma, comes to see Wolfe to tell him that Pete is dead. He was found at the base of a cliff, dead. And from there the story gets very complicated.

My thoughts on the story

This is one of those stories where the mystery is so-so but the content of the story is interesting and entertaining. In the Nero Wolfe mysteries, I like the setting in New York City (in this case, in the late 1950s). I spent some time looking into the history of bootblacks and whether there are bootblacks today (the answer is yes). It was all very interesting.

In this story, Wolfe works for nothing. That is not unheard of, but it is unusual. Pete Vasso's daughter insists that Wolfe clear her father's name and find out who killed him because Pete worshiped Nero Wolfe. 

Regular characters featured: Inspector Cramer, at his crankiest. Two of the freelance investigators, Saul and Fred. Saul is a genius but prefers to freelance.

Archie has a lot to do in this one; he does get quite irritated with Wolfe for not keeping him in the loop, but that is is a normal occurrence in this series.

 

Short Story Wednesday: The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century

 

The Best American Mystery Stories of the Century is an anthology edited by Tony Hillerman and Otto Penzler and published in 2000. The anthology contains 46 short stories, and is 813 pages long. This is my husband's book, which he purchased in 2025 at the Planned Parenthood book sale which we attend every September.

In addition to the short stories, the book has a Foreward by Penzler, an Introduction by Hillerman, and Biographical Notes for each author at the end.

I haven't read any of the stories in this book, but I have read several of the stories from other sources. All the stories listed below were good reads.

• I read "A Jury of Her Peers" by Susan Glaspell, published in 1917, from an anthology of short stories selected by Elizabeth George, A Moment on the Edge. 
• I read "The Possibility of Evil" by Shirley Jackson online. I think it was the first short story I read by her, except for "The Lottery." It was published posthumously, in 1965.
• Two of the stories I have read were published in 1996. I read "Red Clay" from Red Clay, Blue Cadillac by Michael Malone. 
• The other story from 1996 was "The Dark Snow" by Brendan DuBois. My notes indicate that it was very well done, a great read, but the ending so very dark that it turned me off.

As with most anthologies of short stories, there are mixed reactions to this volume and the stories chosen. For anyone interested in comparing how the styles of the mystery short story changed over the years, this book would probably be very useful.

I am including a list of the stories in the book below. The list is in chronological order. 

• A Retrieved Reformation / O. Henry
• Paul's Case / Willa Cather
• The Problem of Cell 13 / Jacques Futrelle
• Blind man's Buff / Frederick Irving Anderson
• Naboth's Vineyard / Melville Davisson Post
• A Jury of Her Peers / Susan Glaspell
• The Gutting of Couffignal / Dashiell Hammett
• Haircut / Ring Lardner
• Blue Murder / Wilbur Daniel Steele
• The Perfect Crime / Ben Ray Redman
• The Baby in the Icebox / James M. Cain
• The Murder / John Steinbeck
• Sense of Humor / Damon Runyan
• Ransom / Pearl S. Buck
• Red Wind / Raymond Chandler
• The Catbird Seat / James Thurber
• The Rear Window / Cornell Woolrich
• An Error in Chemistry / William Faulkner
• The Nine Mile Walk / Harry Kemelman
• The Adventure of the President's Half Disme / Ellery Queen
• The Homesick Buick / John D. MacDonald
• Gone Girl / Ross Macdonald
• The Moment of Decision / Stanley Ellin
• First Offense / Evan Hunter
• The Couple Next Door / Margaret Millar
• The Day of the Execution / Henry Slesar
• The Terrapin / Patricia Highsmith
• The Possibility of Evil / Shirley Jackson
• The Comforts of Home / Flannery O'Connor
• Good Man, Bad Man / Jerome Weidman
• Goodbye, Pops / Joe Gores
• The Whimper of Whipped Dogs / Harlan Ellison
• The Wager / Robert L. Fish
• Do With Me What You Will / Joyce Carol Oates
• Quitters, Inc. / Stephen King
• The Absence of Emily / Jack Ritchie
• By the Dawn's Early Light / Lawrence Block
• Iris / Stephen Greenleaf
• Three-Dot Po / Sara Paretsky
• The Parker Shotgun / Sue Grafton
• Too Many Crooks / Donald E. Westlake
• Hot Springs / James Crumley
• The Dark Snow / Brendan DuBois
• Red Clay / Michael Malone
• Poachers / Tom Franklin
• Running Out of Dog / Dennis Lehane

Short Story Wednesday: Stories from Murder and Other Acts of Literature

Murder and Other Acts of Literature is an anthology of 24 short stories that include a crime but are written by authors who are not crime fiction authors. Some examples are William Faulkner, W.S. Gilbert, Nadine Gordimer, Gabriel García Márquez,  Rudyard Kipling, and Naguib Mahfouz. The stories are not whodunnits or puzzle mysteries, just stories that often include a death.

This is my husband's book. He bought it at the 2025 book sale and read all of the stories in May. He liked a bit more than half of the stories. His favorite stories were "The Hotel of the Idle Moon" by William Trevor and "Mr. Loveday's Little Outing" by Evelyn Waugh. 

Here are my reviews of three of the stories in the anthology.

"Montraldo" by John Cheever

This is the first story in the book and it is 9 pages long. It was first published in the print edition of the June 6, 1964, issue of The New Yorker. 

The first sentence is very good, and sets the tone of the story:

"The first time I robbed Tiffany’s, it was raining."

That is how the narrator of the story finances his trip to Italy. After his sea voyage to Genoa, he buys a second-hand car and drives to Montraldo. Instead of staying in a hotel, he decides to stay in a rundown villa on the cliff. Why would he stay there when he could stay in two luxurious hotels in the area?

He says:

"I stayed because of the view, because I had paid my rent in advance, and because I was curious about the eccentric old spinster and her cranky servant."

The spinster owns the villa, and she and her servant have a very contentious relationship.

I do not remember reading any of John Cheever's short stories before now. I liked this story a lot, and I want to try more stories by him. I like the style of his writing.

"The Hitch-Hikers" by Eudora Welty

A traveling salesman picks up two hitch-hikers. One has a guitar, the other man is kind of surly, and it appears that they have been traveling together for a while. The salesman decides to stay at a motel, one of his normal stops on his route. While he tries to get the motel manager to let the two men sleep on the porch in the back, the two hitch-hikers have a fight, and the man with the guitar is badly injured. There are reports that the two men were trying to steal the salesman's car.  

I haven't had much luck reading stories by Eudora Welty. I have read a few stories from The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty, and I did not like any of them. I have not given up on her stories, but I did not like this one particularly. It sets a mood, which to me was depressing. It was not a bad story, it just did not do anything for me. It was not engaging, and I kept expecting more out of it. It was first published in 1939.

"The Portobello Road" by Muriel Spark

This was the only story in Murder and Other Acts of Literature that I had read previously. I covered it in a previous post, and I have copied my review from that post.

In this story, the narrator is a ghost. For some reason not described in detail, this ghost has not left the earth. She often strolls down Portobello Road, visiting the marketers and their stalls on the pavement. On one of her strolls she sees two people she knows, Kathleen and George. She speaks to the man and he can see her, although the woman cannot. From this point the ghost tells the story of four children who were friends: herself, nicknamed "Needle"; Kathleen; George; and a boy named "Skinny." They are very close friends while in school, but after they graduate, they go off to other areas, even other continents. George goes to manage his uncle's farm in Africa, and Skinny and Needle end up visiting him there. George later returns to Great Britain to see Kathleen, and eventually marries her. I am not that fond of ghost stories, but I liked this one.

Short Story Wednesday: "A Touch of Petulance" by Ray Bradbury

 

The story I am featuring comes from the collection Killer Come Back to Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury. It was published by Hard Case Crime in 2020; the stories were selected by Jonathan R. Eller.

Bradbury wrote three crime novels in 1985, 1990, and 2002, but most of his short stories were in other genres. About half of the stories in Killer Come Back To Me are from the 1940s, and the others are from later decades. This book has a very nice cover and includes illustrations preceding some of the stories.

There is an introduction by Jonathan R. Eller. At the end, there is an essay by Ray Bradbury that was intended to be an introduction to A Memory of Murder, a collection of crime stories published in 1984. This seems appropriate since a number of stories that were in A Memory of Murder are also in Killer Come Back To Me.

"A Touch of Petulance"

First sentence:

"On an otherwise ordinary evening in May, a week before his 29th birthday, Jonathan Hughes met his fate, commuting from another time, another year, another life."

I was surprised and delighted that this story has elements of time travel. 

Jonathan Hughes meets an older man on the train on the way home. He notices that this older man is holding a newspaper dated 20 years in the future, and that paper features an article about the death of his wife. The older version of Jonathan has come back in time to try to prevent her death.

The story was first published in 1980 in Dark Forces, a horror anthology edited by Kirby McCauley. It was adapted as an episode of the Ray Bradbury Theater TV series; Eddie Albert plays the older man in that episode.

Short Story Wednesday: More Stories from Three for the Chair

 

A brief overview of the Nero Wolfes series by Rex Stout:

Nero Wolfe is a genius who supports himself (and his household) as a private detective. Archie Goodwin, the narrator of the stories, is both his assistant and a private investigator, and he does most of the legwork. Nero Wolfe's main interests are good food, raising orchids, and reading books. Usually, he will avoid working on a case unless he needs the money to pay the bills. 

Recently I completed reading the three novellas in Three for the Chair by Rex Stout. Back in 2025, I reviewed the second story in that book, "Immune to Murder."  Now that I have read the two other stories, I think they are also excellent stories. 

The first story in the book was "A Window for Death."

Bert Fyfe's father died when he had pneumonia and Bert was accused of his murder. Members of his family testified at the trial. He was acquitted but he was very bitter and left town. His family had not  seen him for 20 years when he returned, wealthy after striking it rich in uranium mining.  Now Bert has died in similar circumstances as his father, and some members of his family want to know if it was murder. Wolfe proceeds to interview the people involved with the incident.

Rex Stout occasionally included romance in his Nero Wolfe novels and stories, and this one includes a romance, as much of one as you can have in 50 pages. It is a minor part of the story, but it makes for a nice ending.

The last story in the book is "Too Many Detectives."

Archie Goodwin is the narrator of all of the Nero Wolfe novels and short stories. He begins this story with these sentences:

"I am against female detectives on principle. It's not always and everywhere a tough game, but most of the time it is, with no room for the friendly feelings and the nice little impulses...

However, there are times when a principle should take a nap, and that was one of them. Of the seven private detectives present in the room, including Nero Wolfe and me, two were women, seated in a corner, side by side."

He then continues to describe Theodolinda (Dol) Connor, who runs her own detective agency, and Sally Colt, her employee. 

In this story, the seven private detectives have been summoned to Albany for an inquiry into their use of wiretapping by the state of New York. Nero Wolfe is disgruntled because he and Archie have been forced to go to Albany rather than be interviewed in New York City, where they live. He is further incensed when a man that he once did a wiretapping job for is found dead in a nearby office, and he and Archie are arrested. Within a few hours they get out on bail ($20,000 apiece), and in their hotel room they proceed to work with the other five detectives to figure out who killed the dead man.

Along the way, Archie and Wolfe both change their prejudices against women detectives.

Short Story Wednesday: Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

 

Description on the back of the book:

Set in the 1930s, Goodbye to Berlin evokes the glamour and sleaze, excess and repression of Berlin society. Isherwood shows the lives of people under threat from the rise of the Nazis: a wealthy Jewish heiress, Natalia Landauer, a gay couple, Peter and Otto, and an English upper-class waif, the divinely decadent Sally Bowles.

I was disappointed when I read Goodbye to Berlin, and I think that was because my expectations of the book were based on Cabaret (the film). I did not expect the stories to be so depressing. And I expected more of Sally Bowles in the stories, since she is such a big focus in the film. I do much better reading a book when I go in with no expectations. 

Goodbye to Berlin, published in 1939, consists of six connected short stories. The stories are semi-autobiographical. They depicted the poverty in Germany in the early 1930s more realistically than the movie. So, this book is a better depiction of the time, but not what I expected. Isherwood uses his own name for the narrator. 

In the first story, "A Berlin Diary (Autumn 1930)," the narrator is living in a room in the house of a woman, Fraulein Shroeder, who once lived alone. She has been renting rooms for 30 years, but now, "Frl. Shroeder has not even got a room of her own; she has to sleep in the living room behind a screen on a small sofa with broken springs."

The second story, "Sally Bowles," is the longest in the book. It focuses on the time that Christopher knew Sally, a singer and actress. It was not my favorite story.

"On Ruegen Island" is about three young men spending the summer on an island.  "The Nowaks" is about a strange and impoverished family that Christopher lives with; Otto Nowak was one of the young men in the previous story. In "The Nowaks", the characters discuss characters in "The Landauers", the fifth story. Natalia Landauer is a very young Jewish woman, the daughter of affluent parents who hire Christopher to give her English lessons. Natalia is more interested in learning about Christopher and gossiping.

"A Berlin Diary (Winter 1932-3)," is the sixth and last story. It is the shortest story, only 25 pages. It consists of brief vignettes, written like diary entries, that describe the situation in Berlin as it gets worse and worse. Christopher decides he must leave for good. 

I suspect that if I take the time to reread the stories in Goodbye to Berlin, I will find the book more appealing on a second read.

Short Story Wednesday: "Lucky Dip" by Liza Cody

A few weeks ago I transferred a group of books from one wire cube to a new improved one. In the back of the cube, I discovered some books I had forgotten I had. One of them was A Woman's Eye, an anthology of short stories published in 1991 and edited by Sara Paretsky. That book consists of 21 short stories by women; the stories all feature female sleuths. The first story in the book is "Lucky Dip" by Liza Cody.

"Lucky Dip" by Liza Cody

The primary character in this story is a homeless young woman, Crystal, eighteen years old, who supports herself by begging for handouts or looking for food in dumpsters. One night she happens upon the body of dead man. He is dressed well; she quickly takes his wallet and his watch and leaves the area. When she discovers that the wallet has a lot of money in it she is pleased, but there is a downside, because the bills are too large for her to spend without getting into trouble. The other downside is that now she has people looking for her, thinking that she took something important to them. This story is about how she deals with that situation.

The story is told in 1st person narration by Crystal and I liked hearing her thoughts about her predicament, her life, and her actions. 

Previously I have only read one novel by Liza Cody, Dupe, the first book in her Anna Lee detective series, and three of her short stories. In all cases, I was very impressed with her writing. Cody tells a story well and creates interesting characters. 

 

A Woman's Eye features 20 more stories, all published in 1991. Other authors featured are Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, Julie Smith, Amanda Cross, Carolyn G. Hart, Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Dorothy B. Hughes, Antonia Fraser, and more. 

 

Short Story Wednesday: More Hercule Poirot Short Stories

 

These stories came from Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories; the collection has 867 pages and was published in 1999. It consists of 51 short stories; the short stories are in chronological order.

"Four and Twenty Blackbirds"

This story was first published in the USA in Collier's Magazine, November 9, 1940. Later published as "Poirot and the Regular Customer" in The Strand, March 1941.

First few paragraphs of the story:

Hercule Poirot was dining with his friend, Henry Bonnington at the Gallant Endeavour in the King’s Road, Chelsea.

Mr. Bonnington was fond of the Gallant Endeavour. He liked the leisurely atmosphere, he liked the food which was “plain” and “English” and “not a lot of made up messes.” He liked to tell people who dined with him there just exactly where Augustus John had been wont to sit and draw their attention to the famous artists’ names in the visitors’ book. Mr. Bonnington was himself the least artistic of men—but he took a certain pride in the artistic activities of others.

Molly, the sympathetic waitress, greeted Mr. Bonnington as an old friend. She prided herself on remembering her customers’ likes and dislikes in the way of food.

Poirot goes to dinner with a friend, Mr. Bonnington. The friend and the waitress tell Poirot about a man who always eats at the restaurant every Tuesday and Thursday. But one day this man comes on a Monday and orders foods that he has never eaten before. Poirot is very puzzled by this. Then later he finds out that the man had not come there to eat for a few weeks. The last time he came, he again ate different foods, not the man's normal fare at this restaurant. Neither Mr. Bonnington or the waitress knows the diner's name. But Poirot wants to know why the man hasn't visited recently, so he takes it upon himself to find the man. It turns out that the man died unexpectedly following these events.

I liked this story. As far as I can tell this was the last short story written which featured Poirot. It was complex although the story was not very long. I missed the presence of Hastings in the story.

"The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly"  

This story was first published as "The Kidnapping of Johnnie Waverly" in The Sketch, Ocober 10, 1923.

This story seemed very short and not complex at all. Here Poirot discovers who kidnapped a rich couple's son, Johnny Waverly. The child's parents go to visit Poirot to ask advice about whether they should pay the ransom. They have lost faith in the police. When Poirot visits their home, Waverly Court, he soon sees how the plot to take the boy took place, and why the police were not successful.

The ending was interesting in multiple ways: (1) the culprit was surprising, at least to me and (2) Poirot dealt with the culprit in a very unusual way. 

A plus in this case is that Hastings narrates the story. Having Hastings involved usually gives a Poirot short story more humor. Yet for some reason, I did not like this story as well as "Four and Twenty Blackbirds."

While reading these stories I discovered the answer to a question I had wondered about for a while. Was Hasting's the narrator for all of Agatha Christie's short stories. The answer is no, but I don't have any numbers on how many of the stories included Hastings.

Short Story Wednesday: Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night

 

The Grantchester Mysteries is a series of short story collections by James Runcie. The short stories are all connected and follow the criminal investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. 

Sidney Chambers and the Peril of the Night is the second book in the series. I read the first book (Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death) in 2025 and I liked the stories so much that I started reading the next set of stories in late February. 

There were only six stories in this collection, and they are all longish stories, between 50-75 pages each, so I consider them novellas. The crimes are not all murders, but they are all treated seriously. 

"The Perils of the Night" is the first story in the book and takes place in January 1955. Valentine Lyall is a research fellow at Corpus Christi college, the same college Sidney attended. One evening, he and three other men at the college decide to scale one of four octagonal turrets of the King's College chapel as a prank. This results in a fall that kills Valentine Lyall. Sidney is drawn into an investigation into whether the death was accidental or not. There is suspicion that espionage is involved, and the story takes an unusual turn. I found the ending of this story to be interesting but also unsettling.

In the third story, "Unholy Week," Sidney is in the midst of Easter activities, plus he is expecting a visit from his German friend, Hildegarde. He has visited Hildegarde several times in Germany but this is her first trip back to Grantchester since they met several years earlier. While she is visiting, a mathematics teacher dies in his bath and the death is blamed on a heart attack. Both Hildegarde and Sidney suspect foul play and they investigate together. One of my favorite stories, and the longest one at 75 pages.

The last two stories are exceptional good. Both take place in 1961. In "The Uncertainty Principle," Sidney suspects that Amanda's newest beau is not all he claims to be. Amanda is a friend from childhood, and Sidney and Amanda have always been attracted to each other. This one has some very funny moments, but it is also very sad.

In "Appointment in Berlin," Sidney visits Hildegarde. When he gets there, he finds that Hildegarde has gone to East Germany to see her mother in the hospital, after she had a serious fall. He goes to meet her there, but is detained by officials on the way. This story has ties back to the first story in the book. Their return to Berlin is exciting. 

I am enjoying these stories very much and I can't wait until I can get a copy of the third book of stories. We have started watching the Grantchester TV series. There are differences, but I like both versions. 

Short Story Wednesday: More Short Stories by the Lockridges

 

I read the first few stories in Flair for Murder by Francis & Richard Lockridge in January 2025. Now, over a year later, I have finished the remaining 10 stories in the book. My earlier post from January 2025 provides more information about the short story collection and all the series that the two authors wrote together.

All of the stories in the book are relatively short. Of the stories I recently read, the lengths of the stories were between 6 - 10 pages, and they feature Captain M.L. Heimrich of the New York State Police. The stories take place in Westchester County, usually in rural areas. I have fond memories of reading some of the Captain Heimrich novels years ago, so it was fun to revisit that character.  This was the perfect set of stories for me, since they are in a subgenre I like, police procedurals.

With the briefness of these stories, the solution had to be quickly resolved and not dependent on long investigations or interviews with many suspects. In many cases, the culprit seems to be obvious, but soon new evidence comes to light and / or Heimrich has an "aha" moment when some event he sees or experiences how the death could really have happened. Several of the stories revolved around deaths caused by automobile accidents. The last two stories were related to gardening which I especially enjoyed. 

I actually liked every story in this book, which is unusual. Probably because I like how the Lockridges tell a story, very conversational and matter of fact, and I think it suits short stories especially. Also, I think Captain Heimrich is a great character. Now I want to go read some of the books featuring that character. I have several in eBook format that I can try.

Short Story Wednesday: USA Noir

 

I have had a copy of USA Noir for nearly 10 years, and this is the first time I have read any stories from the book. It contains stories selected from 37 USA-based original noir anthologies published by Akashic. The series started in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. I do recognize a large percentage of the authors with stories in this book, but there are some that I don't recognize. Today I stuck with authors I have read before. 

There are Six Sections. Some of them sound pretty dark and unwelcoming, others are ambiguous.

• True Grit
• American Values
• Road Rage
• Homeland Security
• Under the Influence
• Street Justice  

I liked all three of the stories that I read and they are all different. They illustrate the variety of stories found in the Akashic Noir anthologies.

From the Road Rage section:

"Our Eyes Couldn’t Stop Opening" by Megan Abbott is a suspense-filled story about high school girls wanting to escape their boundaries. It is told in first person by a member of a clique; the setting is Grosse Pointe in Detroit, where the author grew up. The narrator follows around a former friend who is getting wilder and wilder in her behavior. It is beautifully written and very dark.

First published in Detroit Noir, in 2007. Megan Abbott has written twelve crime fiction novels, all of them standalone thrillers. 

From the Under the Influence section:

"Lighthouse" by S.J. Rozan is about a thief who is troubled by voices in his head. The voices urge him to rob various locations to get money to buy drugs. He thinks of the voices as aliens who have taken residence in his brain. I have read lots of stories by Rozan and most of them are lighter than this one. Very sad, although the ending is not a total downer.

First published in Staten Island Noir in 2012. S.J. Rozan writes the Lydia Chin / Bill Smith mystery series, mostly set in New York City's Chinatown.

From the Homeland Security section:

"Loot" by Julie Smith is set in the Garden District of New Orleans.  It is a very convoluted story about the devastation in New Orleans after Katrina and the looting that resulted. Smith packed a lot of story into 11 pages. It did not seem very noir to me; for such a serious subject, it was surprisingly light and in some ways uplifting.

First published in New Orleans Noir in 2007. Julie Smith was also the editor of that anthology. She has written two mystery series, the Skip Langdon series set in New Orleans and the Rebecca Schwartz series set in San Francisco.

Short Story Wednesday: Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie

 

The Grantchester Mysteries is a series of short story collections by James Runcie. The short stories are all connected and follow the criminal investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. The crimes are not all murders, but they are all treated seriously. There were only six short stories in this collection, and they are not very short. The shortest one was 50 pages, the longest was 80 pages, so some of them count as novellas?  Anyway, I liked all of the stories, not sure which is my favorite, and I now have a copy of the 2nd book in the series. I have not seen the TV series based on this series, but we will try it sometime.

The first story is set in 1953, the coronation year of Queen Elizabeth II. I read that story back in October 2025 and discussed it in this post.

I finished reading all of the stories in Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death in early December and I enjoyed them very much. I like that Sidney is a vicar in the Church of England; I enjoy mysteries with a clerical setting. I admit that the various titles used in the Church of England are confusing to me, but the more I read these stories the closer I come to a rough understanding of the different roles.

"A Question of Trust"

This is the second story in the book and it begins on December 31st, 1953. Sidney is taking the train to London to visit with some family and friends. He then takes a bus to St. John's Wood, where he will attend a New Year's Eve dinner party at the home of his friend Nigel, one of the most promising MPs in the country. His sister Jenny, her new boyfriend, and Jenny's friend and flatmate Amanda Kendall will also be at the dinner. Sidney has known Amanda for years, and has always been attracted to her, but once he decided to become a clergyman, he was no longer considered a viable marriage partner for her.

At the dinner party, Amanda's engagement ring is stolen. The ring was very valuable and her fiance is understandably upset. It is suggested that Sidney help look into how the ring could have disappeared.

Several of the characters in this story show up in later stories, and I like the continuity from story to story. Sidney questions whether he should be involving himself in investigating crimes, in view of his profession. He often questions his beliefs but he is dedicated to his work; I like his philosophizing (to himself, usually) on various issues.

Other stories in the book deal with (1) the investigation of forgeries and thefts of valuable art works;  (2) a man murdered on stage, in a play that Sidney has a small part in; (3) a death at a jazz club; and (4) a doctor who may be helping older persons in the village towards death after long illnesses.

Short Story Wednesday: Christmas Stalkings, ed. Charlotte MacLeod

 

Christmas Stalkings, published in 1991, was the second Christmas short story anthology edited by Charlotte MacLeod. All of the stories in the book appeared in print for the first time in this book. This week I finished reading all the stories in that book. 

In my original post on several short stories in Christmas Stalkings, I noted that the stories in the book had been described as mostly dark. These two stories are on the lighter, cozier side and I enjoyed them very much.

"The Fabulous Nick" by Mickey Friedman

In this story, the real Santa Claus gets a letter from a child saying: "I hate you! Stay away from us!" It is signed by Jason T. McGuire. The address is in Greenwich Village in New York City. Nick, as Santa is called in this story, decides to go undercover in Jason's neighborhood and see why Jason hates him so much. It turns out that Jason's father was arrested for stealing valuable jewels in another apartment in the same building that they live in and is in jail. The family has no way to get him out on bail, so he will still be in jail over Christmas, although his family is sure he is innocent. Nick decides to investigate further. He introduces himself to Jason's mother as Nick Santos, a chimney specialist who has come to work on the chimneys in the apartment building. He then talks to several people who live in the building as he works on their chimneys. Santa Claus is a pretty good investigator in this story.

Mickey Friedman is a new author to me. Her mystery novels were published in the 1980s. There are reviews on Publisher's Weekly, and there was a review of Hurricane Season in 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller. (See this post at MysteryFile.) When I looked the author up on Fantastic Fiction, the mysteries attributed to Mickey Friedman showed up under another name, Michael Jan Friedman, along with a lot of science fiction novels. On Goodreads, the mystery novels show up under two names: Mickey Friedman and Michaela Thompson (which I believe is correct). If anyone else reading this has more information, I would love to hear about this author.

"Fruitcake, Mercy, and Black-eyed Peas" by Margaret Maron

I saved this story for last because it was one of my favorite stories in the book, AND because it can be considered a New Year's Day story, and I don't run into those very often. 

In this story, Marnolla Faison, a middle-aged black woman who lives in Dobbs, North Carolina, has been arrested for shoplifting, and not for the first time. She called Deborah Knott, a lawyer she has known for many years, to bail her out. She was arrested for stealing diapers and there are mitigating factors. Billy Tyson, owner of the Bigg Shopp where Marnolla had perpetrated her crime, is not in any mood to be talked out of pressing charges, as he had in the past. 

This story was the least-crime related in this book, if I remember correctly. Yes, there is a crime, but it is not serious. The story is more about the people involved in and connected to the shoplifting incident, and community relations.

In addition to the fact that this story addresses some social issues in a sensitive and humorous way, I love this story because it ends with a New Year's Day dinner featuring black-eyed peas. It is a tradition in the South to eat black-eyed peas on the first day of the year for luck during the coming year. My husband cooks Hoppin' John, a dish containing black-eyed peas, every year on New Year's Day.

Margaret Maron wrote two mystery series. My favorite books by her are from the Sigrid Harald series, about a female New York City police detective who has to deal with the obstacles of being a woman in a male profession in the 1980s. The first book, One Coffee With, was published in 1981. 

Maron's series starring Judge Deborah Knott was her most well-known series, and is set in North Carolina.  The story in this book features Deborah Knott before she became a judge, and was written before the first book in that series was published in 1992. 

Short Story Wednesday: More Stories from Christmas Stalkings

 

Christmas Stalkings, published in 1991, was the second Christmas short story anthology edited by Charlotte MacLeod. As the subtitle "Tales of Yuletide Murder" suggests, these are all mystery stories. All of the stories in the book appeared in print for the first time in this book. Last Wednesday, I reviewed three of the stories. I have several more stories to talk about today. Here they are:

"Counterfeit Christmas" by Charlotte MacLeod

MacLeod is a Canadian crime fiction writer who has written two series under her own name, and two under a pseudonym, as Alisa Craig. One of her series features Peter Shandy, a professor at Balaclava Agricultural College in rural Massachusetts. 

This story also features Peter Shandy, who lives in a faculty dwelling alongside the homes of seven other members of the faculty. Each year at Christmas all of the homes are decorated, and tourists come on campus to enjoy the decorated homes. Food is sold by the students to make money. This year, the campus comptroller, Moira Haskins, finds a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill in the funds from the previous days' sales. The bill has the portrait of President Thorkjeld Svenson on the bill rather than that of President Andrew Jackson. As more counterfeit bills show up the next night, Shandy helps to figure out what is going on and how to deal with it. It is a tame story, but the solution is clever and fun. This story features Peter Shandy's cat, Jane.

"The Running of the Deer" by Reginald Hill

Reginald Hill's most well-known mystery series is his Dalziel and Pascoe series. I have read 14 of the 24 books in that series. The character in this story is Joe Sixmith. At the time this story was published, there were two short stories about Sixsmith. Two years later, in 1993, Hill published the first novel in the Joe Sixsmith series, Blood Sympathy. I haven't read any novels in that series but I have copies of all five of them.

In "The Running of the Deer," Joe Sixsmith is hired to look into "lamping" incidents on an estate in Cumbria. Lamping is using extremely bright lights in hunting, in this case for deer. Joe is invited to stay in a converted barn while he is investigating. I liked this story because events take a surprising sharp turn at the end. And because Sixsmith has a black and white cat that travels with him. And now I am going to get moving on reading the first Joe Sixsmith novel.  

"A Political Necessity" by Robert Barnard

Robert Barnard is one of my favorite authors. I have read all of his Perry Trethowan series, most of the Charlie Peace series (which broke off from the Perry Trethowan series), and a lot of his standalone novels. His books are quirky, often have interesting twists, and are generally considered in the cozy sub-genre. They have bite but they are not violent or gritty.

"A Political Necessity" is a story about a politician who has recently gotten a promotion to a position in the Home Office. Immediately he starts planning to kill his wife.

First few sentences in the story:

It must be rare for the first thought of a newly appointed government minister to be: Now is the time to kill my wife. Don’t get me wrong—I’m sure many of my colleagues would like to, with that dull, insistent sort of wishing which will never actually impel them to action, and which is characteristic of second-rate minds. My thought was not If only I could but Now I can.

This is a pretty dark story, but I loved it.

"The Only True Unraveller" by John Malcolm

"Death is the only true unraveller" is a quote from The Gondoliers by Gilbert and Sullivan. This story starts with two men, long time friends, going for a walk on a cold night in December, on Christmas Eve. They are walking through a cemetery near to Quentin Cranbrooks' home. The protagonist is visiting Quentin at Christmas because he has been widowed for two years and has no one to spend Christmas with. The story is atmospheric, the mood gradually gets darker, and the setting is wonderful. If you like Gilbert and Sullivan and/or cemeteries, you might enjoy this story.

"The January Sale Stowaway" by Dorothy Cannell

This story is very cozy. It doesn't truly take place at Christmas but is about the days following Christmas and into January at a time when the main character was alone and lonely. And it also involves a department store Father Christmas who is bitter because he has been accused of theft. I loved the story and was very glad I read it.

The first Christmas anthology edited by MacLeod was Mistletoe Mysteries, published in 1989.

Short Story Wednesday: Short Stories from Christmas Stalkings

 

The subtitle for this book of Christmas short stories is "Tales of Yuletide Murder." Based on the cover, you might think the stories are all cozy, but one reviewer of the book described the stories as mostly dark. In the small sample I have read so far, one is on the cozy side, and two are definitely darker. Christmas Stalkings was published in 1991, and all of the stories in the book appeared in print for the first time in this book.

 

"The Santa Claus Caper" by Bill Crider

Bill Crider is one of my favorite authors. I have read nine books in his Sheriff Dan Rhodes series and I plan to read all of the Dan Rhodes mysteries. Another mystery series by Crider features Carl Burns, a professor of English Literature at a small college in Texas. (Crider was the chairman of the English Department at Alvin Community College in Alvin, Texas.) 

"The Santa Claus Caper" introduced me to the characters in the Carl Burns series, including R. M. “Boss” Napier, Chief of the Pecan City, Texas, police. Carl Burns has talked Napier into playing a part in a "reader's theater" version of A Christmas Carol. In turn, Chief Napier wants Burns to go undercover as a department store Santa Claus, because the store was having high losses due to shoplifting. Neither one of them is happy playing their new role.

"Family Christmas" by Patricia Moyes

I like Patricia Moyes' mysteries and I have read all nineteen books in her Inspector Henry Tibbett series. The short story in this book does not feature her series characters.

"Family Christmas" is a clever and poignant story. Robert Runfold and his wife, Mary, live a comfortable life with lots of money. They have two married daughters, who are coming home for Christmas. Robert is curmudgeonly and suspicious. He thinks that both of his daughter's husbands would gladly kill him for the money that their wives would inherit after his death. So he has changed his will so that they will not inherit any money until both daughters are over forty. I had no idea how this story would end.

"Miss Melville Rejoices" by Evelyn E. Smith

Evelyn E. Smith is new to me. Early in her career, she wrote science fiction and fantasy, both short stories and novels. In 1986, she started a five book series featuring Miss Melville, a middle-aged assassin. The story in this book, published in 1991, was her first short story featuring Miss Melville.

This story begins on Christmas Eve, with Miss Melville breaking into the Melville Foundation for Anthropological Research, where later in the evening there would be a party in honor of the deposed dictator of Mazigaziland, the infamous Matthew Zimwi, the man for whom Time magazine had established the category of Monster of the Year. Miss Melville is planning to assassinate Matthew Zimwi during the party. The story is very complicated and I enjoyed the outcome very much. 

I will definitely be reading the first novel in the Miss Melville series, Miss Melville Regrets.

Following is a list of the authors and short stories in this book:

• Charlotte MacLeod: Counterfeit Christmas 
• Reginald Hill: The Running of the Deer 
• Elizabeth Peters: Liz Peters, PI 
• Medora Sale: Angels 
• John Malcolm: The Only True Unraveller 
• Dorothy Cannell: The January Sale Stowaway 
• Bill Crider: The Santa Claus Caper 
• Patricia Moyes: Family Christmas 
• Evelyn E. Smith: Miss Melville Rejoices 
• Eric Wright: Two in the Bush 
• Mickey Friedman: The Fabulous Nick 
• Robert Barnard: A Political Necessity 
• Margaret Maron: Fruitcake, Mercy, and Black-Eyed Peas

Short Story Wednesday: Two Christmas Stories by Lorrie Moore

 

In May 2024, I read several stories in Birds of America by Lorrie Moore. The first few stories were confusing to me, and it took me a while to adjust to Moore's style of writing. 

Here are some general themes I noted when reading the stories in Birds of America. 

• First of all, each story features birds in some way. Sometimes just one offhand sentence, sometimes a brief scene. I liked that. 
• The stories usually focused on relationships and the people tended to be quirky. 
• Most of the stories, maybe all, were somewhat depressing, sometimes sad. But in most of them, there was also humor.

There were two stories in Birds of America set at Christmas, and I left those to read in December. I did not get around to reading them until this year. 

"Charades" is set on Christmas Day. The family has gathered at their parents' home. Therese is the oldest and has gotten an appointment as a circuit court judge; Ann is ten years younger and in law school; Andrew is the middle child, and an electrical engineer. Therese and Andrew both have spouses, and Ann is getting married soon to Tad. Their parents are in their seventies. They are playing charades. Therese has a plane to catch at 4:30; Ann is irritated because her sister did not schedule a later flight and spend more time with the family. Mostly the grown children just seem to bicker with each other. That seems like a fairly normal Christmas atmosphere for a family of only adults (there is just one very young grandchild). My description makes the story sound really dreary, but it left me with a good feeling nevertheless.

"Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens" is more a cat story than a Christmas story, but it ends on a happier note than "Charades" did. It begins in November and ends on Christmas Day.

Bert, Aileen's cat, died on Veterans Day. Aileen is deeply affected, and begins drinking heavily. She has a loving husband and a beautiful child, and neither her friends or her family understand the level of grief she is feeling after Bert's death.

Her husband eventually convinces Aileen to see a therapist. She finds a therapist who guarantees she will be cured by Christmas. 

Favorite quote:  Jack, Aileen's husband, says...

"Life is a long journey across a wide country... Sometimes the weather's good. Sometimes it's bad. Sometimes it's so bad, your car goes off the road."

I still have three stories left to read in Birds of America. They are longer stories, each about 35-40 pages. 

Short Story Wednesday: Thrilling Tales

 

Early this week, I started reading stories in McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, edited by Michael Chabon. I was a little bit confused by the introduction, which seemed to be describing what kind of stories would be in the book, but did not help me at all. The title indicates that the stories would be thrilling, but the four stories I read were not in any way thrilling. That description makes it sound like I did not like the stories, but I did, for the most part. 

My favorite story was "Chuck’s Bucket" by Chris Offutt. That story was all over the place, with time travel and a ghost and alternate universes. Plus the main character was Chris Offutt himself, writing about his difficulties in writing the story. Because he thinks that there is a ghost in his apartment, he goes to visit a university professor to ask for help. Instead his professor decides to use Chris as the subject for a time travel experiment. I liked that story very much; it was original and fun.

In "Blood Doesn't Come Out" by Michael Crichton, a private investigator's day starts off badly. He proves that an employee was stealing from his store, but it turns out that the guilty employee was the employer's lover, and the employer is very unhappy with the result. Then the PI's girlfriend walks out on him. From there, things go from bad to worse. The story was good and the ending was unexpected. 

"Private Grave 9" by Karen Joy Fowler was more of a supernatural story. It is set at an archaeological dig in Mesopotamia, around the same time as Howard Carter's dig. Those at the dig are unhappy because they are not finding anything as important as Howard Carter was finding at Tutankhamen's tomb. Finally they find the royal tomb of a princess. The narrator of the story is a photographer and takes photos of all the finds. On the photo of the princess, a face was superimposed over the skull. It was an interesting story because of the setting, and I like Fowler's writing, but it did not seem to go anywhere.

The last story I read, Aimee Bender’s "The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers," was closest to a mystery puzzle. A married couple is found dead in a room, the wife poisoned, the husband stabbed. The strange thing is that they have a collection of salt and pepper shakers. The police detective who narrates the story wonders if they killed each other. The end of the story is inconclusive. It was a decent story but not really satisfying. 

I will continue reading the stories in this book. The full list of authors and stories is below: 

• Jim Shepard’s "Tedford and the Megalodon"
• Glen David Gold’s "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter"
• Dan Chaon’s "The Bees"
• Kelly Link’s "Catskin"
• Elmore Leonard’s "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman"
• Carol Emshwiller’s "The General"
• Neil Gaiman’s "Closing Time"
• Nick Hornby’s "Otherwise Pandemonium"
• Stephen King’s "The Tale of Gray Dick"
• Michael Crichton’s "Blood Doesn’t Come Out"
• Laurie King’s "Weaving the Dark"
• Chris Offutt’s "Chuck’s Bucket"
• Dave Eggers’s "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly"
• Michael Moorcock’s "The Case of the Nazi Canary"
• Aimee Bender’s "The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers"
• Sherman Alexie’s "Ghost Dance"
• Harlan Ellison’s "Goodbye to All That"
• Karen Joy Fowler’s "Private Grave 9"
• Rick Moody’s "The Albertine Notes"
• Michael Chabon’s "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance"

Short Story Wednesday: The Grantchester Mysteries

 

The Grantchester Mysteries consists of six short story collections by James Runcie. The short stories are all connected and follow the investigations of Sidney Chambers, a vicar in Grantchester. This first story is set in 1953, the coronation year of Queen Elizabeth II. 

Years ago, I read several reviews of the stories in the Grantchester TV series and some reviewers said that the TV episodes were better than the short stories. So for a while I avoided reading the stories. I still haven't seen the TV series, but now I have read the first story in Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death and I enjoyed it very much. 

"The Shadow of Death"

First paragraph:

Canon Sidney Chambers had never intended to become a detective. Indeed, it came about quite by chance, after a funeral, when a handsome woman of indeterminate age voiced her suspicion that the recent death of a Cambridge solicitor was not suicide, as had been widely reported, but murder.

The death is a suicide and the lover of the dead man, Pamela Morton, is the woman who asks Sidney to look into it. She doesn't believe that he would commit suicide. Sidney is a vicar, and although he doesn't see himself as suited to investigating such an issue, he agrees to talk to various people who knew the dead man. 

It helps that he has a good friend, Inspector Keating, who worked on the investigation of the man's death. However, his friend is somewhat irritated by Sidney's interest, and doesn't see that there is evidence that points to murder.

Other characters are:

• the wife of the dead man;
• the dead man's secretary;
• and his business partner, who is married to the dead man's lover.

I liked this first story very much. I enjoyed meeting the protagonist, Canon Sidney Sheldon. I liked Sidney's musings on his faith, and his misgivings on getting himself involved in investigating a possible crime. I thought the mystery was put together well, and I liked the depictions of the various characters. 

This first story is 80 pages long, so it is basically a novella. The other five stories in the book range from 50 to 70 pages in length. 

Short Story Wednesday: Two Hercule Poirot Short Stories

Recently I read two short stories from Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories by Agatha Christie. The collection has 867 pages and was published in 1999; it consists of 51 short stories.

 

"The Adventures of the Clapham Cook"

First published in The Sketch in November 1923. Later published in the US collection The Under Dog and Other Stories in 1951, and then in a UK collection in 1974, Poirot’s Early Cases.

One thing I like in the Hercule Poirot short stories is that they are often told in first person by Captain Hastings; I also find the conversations between Hastings and Poirot very entertaining. This story fit that model, and I enjoyed it. 

These are the opening lines of the story:

At the time that I was sharing rooms with my friend Hercule Poirot, it was my custom to read aloud to him the headlines in the morning newspaper, the Daily Blare.

The Daily Blare was a paper that made the most of any opportunity for sensationalism. Robberies and murders did not lurk obscurely in its back pages. Instead they hit you in the eye in large type on the front page.

ABSCONDING BANK CLERK DISAPPEARS WITH FIFTY THOUSAND POUNDS’ WORTH OF NECOTIABLE SECURITIES, I read.

HUSBAND PUTS HIS HEAD IN GAS OVEN. UNHAPPY HOME LIFE. MISSING TYPIST. PRETTY GIRL OF TWENTY-ONE. WHERE IS EDNA FIELD?

"There you are Poirot, plenty to choose from an absconding bank clerk, a mysterious suicide, a missing typist--which will you have?"

None of these headlines interest Poirot. He prefers to spend his day at home, taking care of personal issues, such as trimming his mustache.

But shortly after this discussion, they have a visitor, a woman who wants Poirot to find her cook. He does not take her seriously, and she accuses him of being a snob. Poirot gives in and investigates the case, uncovering a diabolical plot related to another crime at the same time.

"Murder in the Mews" 

This story is novella length. First published in the US in Redbook Magazine, September/October 1936. It was published in the short story collection, Murder in the Mews and Other Stories, in 1937.

In this story, Captain Hastings does not show up at all and the story is told in third person viewpoint. However, Poirot is working with another favorite character, Inspector Japp. 

One morning, Inspector Japp calls Hercule Poirot to tell him that a death had occurred in Bardsley Gardens Mews the night before. That night, Japp and Poirot had been walking through the Mews after leaving a bonfire on Guy Fawkes night, and they are discussed how all the fireworks could cover the sounds of gunfire. 

Poirot joins Inspector Japp at the woman's residence where the death occurred. At first the assumption is suicide; very soon after the police arrive, they determine that it was a murder set up to look like suicide. And thus begins an investigation into the friends of the dead woman. She was living with another woman, a friend, and was engaged to Charles Laverton-West, an "M.P. for some place in Hampshire.” The resolution is unusual and Poirot is clever as expected.

"Murder in the Mews" was the best mystery of these two stories. I think the novella length provides more time for development and depth in the story. The characters in "The Adventures of the Clapham Cook" were more interesting, but the story felt more rushed, and some parts of the ending were not resolved for me. Both stories had their high points, and the character of Hercule Poirot is always entertaining to read about.

Both of these stories were adapted for Agatha Christie's Poirot, starring David Suchet, and the adaptations were very well done.