Short Story Wednesday: "One Morning They'll Hang Him" by Margery Allingham

 

I have long been a fan of Margery Allingham's novels. I read most of the books in the Albert Campion series when I was much younger, and once I started blogging in 2012, I began rereading them in order (mostly) starting with Death of a Ghost. 

Today I am sharing my thoughts on one of her short stories.

"One Morning They'll Hang Him"

This is an Albert Campion short story. Chief Inspector Kenny is visiting Mr. Campion in his home, asking for his help in solving a murder. He is very sure he has the murderer in custody but he does not have a crucial piece of evidence in order to take the case to trial.

Campion asks for more information about the case. Kenny describes the victim, an elderly rich woman who lives in a big house on Barraclough road with her companion / housekeeper. Her only living relative is her nephew, who visited her often in his childhood. He returned from the war with mental problems following an injury when a bridge blew up with him on it. He has returned to London with his wife of  six weeks and has a job. They need a place to live, and the nephew and his aunt have an argument when he asks her if they can live in a couple of her rooms upstairs. The couple were having dinner at the aunt's house when they argued, and they left shortly afterwards. The nephew is accused of returning to the house and shooting her with his gun; he was seen in the neighborhood shortly after she was shot.

The problem with Inspector Kenny's case is that he cannot find the gun and that is a necessary part of the evidence. The police have searched all areas where it could have been left behind or hidden. Inspector Kenny wants Campion to find the gun.

I will admit that this is not my favorite type of mystery short story, because the focus is on the puzzle. But I enjoyed it very much, and it was the combination of Margery Allingham's writing and Campion's character that made it work well for me.

"One Morning They'll Hang Him" was originally published in the August 1950 issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, but I encountered the story when I started reading the short story anthology Mysterious Pleasures, A Celebration of the Crime Writers' Association 50th Anniversary, published in 2003. I have many more stories to read in that anthology. 

See this article at Martin Edwards website for a description of how he assembled that anthology. It also lists the other stories and authors included in the book.

Short Story Wednesday: "A Man With a Fortune" by Peter Lovesey

Peter Lovesey died on April 10, 2025, at the age of 88. He was a British author who published historical and contemporary mystery novels, from 1970 to 2024. I have enjoyed many of his short stories and novels over the years. You can read more about his career in this post at the Rap Sheet, "A Decent Man and One Hell of a Writer."

I looked around for some of Peter Lovesey's short stories and I found this one, published in 1980.

"A Man With a Fortune"

Eva is returning to England on a flight out of San Francisco. She is nervous about flying and is very uncomfortable during the take off. The man in the seat next to her starts up a conversation; he is going to England for the first time to try to find out if he has any long lost cousins in the UK. He is a widower, has a bad heart, and even though he is forty two, he doesn't expect to live much longer. He also owns two vineyards and has lots of money. He plans to find where birth and death records are stored, although he realizes the search will be a difficult job because his grandfather's name is a very common one, John Smith. 

When Eva gets home, she tells her roommate, Janet, about John Smith and his search for relatives. When Janet learns that John is rich she gets interested, and suggests ways that they could be helpful to him. 

In the end, both of them got quite a surprise.

Per the list of Peter Lovesey's short stories at his website, this story was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, November 3, 1980, and was also titled "How Mr Smith Traced His Ancestors." It was adapted for an episode of Tales of the Unexpected in 1982.

I read this story in A Century of Mystery 1980-1989, an anthology edited by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini. I first saw this book reviewed at George Kelley's blog. I immediately found a copy for myself at ABEBOOKS, but this is the first story I have read in the book. I will be getting to more stories in the book soon, I hope.

Please check out George's review of the anthology. He includes a list of all the stories and authors included.

 

Short Story Wednesday: Two Books of Horror and Strange Stories

  

Today I am sharing two of my husband's short story books, which lean toward the strange and the weird. Normally these are not the sort of stories I prefer, but I think I will be trying some stories from both of these in the future.

Nightmare Flower 
Stories by Elizabeth Engstrom
Introduction by Lisa Kröger

Description from the back of the book:

This collection of eighteen short tales, a novelette and a short novel takes the reader inside the dark imagination of Elizabeth Engstrom, author of acclaimed horror classics like When Darkness Loves Us. 

In these stories, you will read about a woman asked to be complicit in her own mother’s death, a grandmother with a macabre hobby, a bizarre, phallic-shaped flower that portends evil for a married couple, a father whose son is caught up in a sinister government experiment. These are weird and unsettling tales that will linger with the reader.

​In her introduction to this new edition, Lisa Kröger writes, “There are true horrors that await readers in all of Engstrom’s works ... reminds me of another giant of horror literature, Shirley Jackson.”

Elizabeth Engstrom is an American author of speculative fiction, who grew up in Illinois and Utah. This book was originally published in 1992 by Tor. Many of the stories in it were published between 1986 and 1991; others were published for the first time in the 1992 Tor edition. 

Scotland the Strange: Weird Tales from Storied Lands
Edited by Johnny Mains

Description from the back of the book:

From misty moors, crags and clifftops comes a hoard of eighteen strange tales gathered by Johnny Mains, award-winning anthologist and editor of the British Library anthology Celtic Weird. Sourced from Scotland’s storied literary heritage and bustling with witches, ghosts, devils and merfolk, this selection celebrates the works of treasured Scottish writers such as John Buchan, Robert Louis Stevenson, Dorothy K. Haynes and Neil M. Gunn alongside rare pieces by lesser-known authors – including two tales translated from Scots Gaelic.

Brooding in the borderlands where strange folklore, bizarre mythology and twentieth-century hauntings meet, this volume promises chills and shivers as keen and fresh as the wind-whipped wilds of Scotland.

The stories in Scotland the Strange were published between 1818 and 1976. Each story is preceded by one or more paragraphs about the author. 

Here is a list of the stories and authors in Scotland the Strange:

• The Hunt of Eildon / James Hogg
• The Murder Hole / Catherine Sinclair
• The Doom of Soulis & The Seven Lights / John Mackay Wilson
• The Devil of Glenluce / Eliza Lynn Linton
• The Cavern of Steenfoll: A Scottish Legend / Wilhelm Hauff, translated by S. Mendel
• Ticonderoga / Robert Louis Stevenson
• "Death to the Head That Wears No Hair!" / David Grant
• The Ghosts of Craig-Aulnaic /Anonymous
• The Stag-Haunted Stream / Mrs. Campbell of Dunstaffnage
• The Two Sisters and the Curse / Translated by Rev. John Gregorson Campbell
• The Outgoing of the Tide / John Buchan
• Assipattle and the Mester Stoorworm / Elizabeth W. Grierson
• Black-Haired John of Lewis, Sailor / Translated by Rev. James MacDougall
• The Moor / Neil M. Gunn
• Good Bairns / Dorothy K. Haynes
• The Lass with the Delicate Air / Eileen Bigland
• The Inheritance / Simon Pilkington
• The Curse of Mathair Nan Uisgeachan / Angus Wolfe Murray

Short Story Wednesday: Deadly Anniversaries

 

Three years ago I purchased Deadly Anniversaries, edited by Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller, so that I could read "Chin Yong-Yun Sets the Date" by S.J. Rozan. Chin Yong-Yun is Lydia Chin's mother in the Lydia Chin / Bill Smith series. My thoughts on that story are in this post. So, now I am finally getting around to reading more stories in that book.

Description from the cover of the book:

Deadly Anniversaries celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Mystery Writers of America with a collection of stories from some of the top names in crime fiction. An anniversary can honor many things: a birth, a wedding and sometimes even a death. 

Each author puts their own unique spin on what it means to recognize a certain day or event each year. These nineteen stories travel across a wide range of historical and contemporary settings and remind readers of how broad the mystery writing tradition can be, encompassing detective tales, domestic intrigue, psychological suspense, black humor and thrilling action. 

Here is a list of the stories in the book:

• "If You Want Something Done Right. . ." by Sue Grafton
• "Ten Years On" by Laurie R. King
• "Normal in Every Way" by Lee Child
• "The Replacement" by Margaret Maron
• "Chin Yong-Yun Sets the Date" by S. J. Rozan
• "Amazing Grace" by Max Allan Collins
• "Ten Years, Two Days, Six Hours" by Wendy Hornsby
• "The Anniversary Gift" by Jeffery Deaver
• "The Last Dive Bar" by Bill Pronzini
• "Case Open" by Carolyn Hart
• "The Bitter Truth" by Peter Lovesey
• "Unknown Caller" by Meg Gardiner
• "April 13" by Marcia Muller
• "Whodat Heist" by Julie Smith
• "Blue Moon" by William Kent Krueger
• "Aqua Vita" by Peter Robinson
• "The Last Hibakusha" by Naomi Hirahara
• "30 and Out" by Doug Allyn
• "The Fixer" by Alison Gaylin and Laura Lippman

In the last couple of days, I read stories by Lee Child, Margaret Maron, Max Allan Collins, and William Kent Krueger. 

Max Allan Collin's story, "Amazing Grace", was my favorite of those four.  

In 1960, Grace Rushmore is eighty years old and has been married to her husband Lem for fifty years. He has never been a very good husband; he married her for her money and never contributed to the business of the farm that had supported them. They had ended up selling the farm and opened up a bakery in town, and Grace baked wedding cakes as her specialty. Now Grace has four children, twelve grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. All of the children and their families are coming home for a big 50th anniversary celebration. Grace bakes a huge Lemon Layer Cake for the party. 

I really liked the ending of this story. A recipe for Lemon Layer Cake is included following the story.

Short Story Wednesday: Shadow Voices, ed. by John Connolly

 

The subtitle for this volume of short stories is "300 years of Irish Genre Fiction, A History in Stories." The first story is from 1729, "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift. The last story is from 2019, "The Boughs Withered When I Told Them My Dreams" by Maura McHugh.

My husband and I bought this book because we both like short stories and we thought there would be stories that would appeal to both of us in this book. We bought the eBook edition because it is a great price and it is a very large book, at over 1000 pages. Connolly's introduction is very good, very informative. And he has provided lengthy introductions for each author and the story included for that author.

This is a difficult book to describe, so I am going to use the overview at Connolly's web site: 

Lemuel Gulliver, Dracula, Narnia — the history of Irish fiction is a history of genre fiction: horror, romantic fiction, science fiction, crime writing, and more. Irish writers have produced pioneering tales of detection, terrifying ghost stories, and ground-breaking women’s popular literature. In a single volume, John Connolly presents the history of Irish genre writing and uses it to explore how we think about fiction itself.

Deeply researched and passionately argued, SHADOW VOICES takes the lives of more than sixty writers — by turns tragic, amusing, and adventurous, but always extraordinary — and sets them alongside the stories they have written to create a new way of looking at genre and literature, both Irish and beyond. Here are vampires and monsters, murderers and cannibals. Here are female criminal masterminds and dogged detectives, star-crossed lovers and vengeful spouses.

I read three stories from the book. None of those stories were my usual reading, but they were all good stories. 

"The Man in the Bell" (1821) by William Maginn

This is a very brief story and as such I don't want to tell too much about. A young man is a bell ringer for his church. He relates the events when he got trapped in the belfry when his friends start ringing the bell. Well written.

"The Witching Hour" (1884) Margaret Wolfe Hungerford 

Hungerford was a prolific writer of romantic fiction, both novels and short stories. This story is part ghost story, part romance. Three servants have left the employment of the Vernon family. The latest to leave is the cook. The servants have all been scared by an apparition walking around upstairs. Mr. and Mrs. Vernon have a beautiful daughter, Dolores, who is engaged to Frank Harley, who is staying at the Vernon's home. He volunteers to stay up late that night and see if he can view the ghost and solve the problem. 

"Fly Away Tiger, Fly Away Thumb" (1953) Brian Moore 

The introduction to this story was especially interesting because Connolly explored Brian Moore's life, especially in relation to his writing and gave me lots of recommendations for books to look for. Moore was born in Ireland but later emigrated to Canada. Connolly notes that, in this story, Moore drew on his experiences in Naples during World War II.

The story is very strange, and tells of a magician who is abducted by a gang of outlaws, who demand a huge ransom to return him to his band of performers. He does escape of course. The story has some gruesome aspects, but it was entertaining.

I look forward to trying more stories from this book. I will try more of the earlier stories and some of the stories from contemporary authors.

Short Story Wednesday: Crime Hits Home, Part 2

 

Crime Hits Home is an anthology from Mystery Writers of America, edited by S. J. Rozan. The book was published in April 2022 and all of the stories in the book were first published in this book.

The theme for the stories in this book is home and the crimes that endanger it. The definition of home has been interpreted in different ways in the various stories in this book.

In 2023, I reported on the first three stories in the book. See my comments on those stories here. 

This week I have read four more stories in the book:

"Banana Island" by Susan Breen

In terms of pure enjoyment, this was my favorite story. Marly Bingham owns a small house in Long Island City (three bedrooms, 1.5 baths, Standing Room Only kitchen). For this house she has been offered two million dollars. She doesn't want to sell, although she could use the money. Many of her relatives live in the same area and she wants to stay where she has family. But the really interesting part is that Marly works for the IRS; her job is to talk on the phone to scammers who try to convince lonely, needy people into giving away all their money. While Marly is taking up the scammer's time, they are not bothering other people. The scammer she is currently working on is very persistent. The story was very unusual, entertaining, and  I loved the resolution. 

"Calling Mr. Smith" by Ellen Hart

This is another unusual story. It takes place in October 1987, in Hollywood, Minnesota. The theme is "you can't go home again." 

Astrid Ahlness is returning to her home town and the house she grew up in to celebrate her mother's 75th birthday. Astrid and her mother have never gotten along. Her older brother, Ivor, has always been the favored one who can do no wrong. Now that they are older and have families, Astrid and Ivor get along fairly well. Astrid desperately wants to inherit her half of the house when her mother dies, but Ivor wants to buy it from their mother for his summer home. There is a lot of plot and backstory packed into this 23-page story. Overall it was sad and depressing but well-written.

"Stalking Adolf" by Renee James

This story centers on a transgender woman. She lives with her 16-year-old daughter, who resents the fact that her father chose to become a woman. The woman, who narrates the story, is being stalked by a man who threatens her life and her daughter's. One night he invades their home, and she has to decide how to handle the situation. An interesting story, but the resolution made me uncomfortable.

"Playing for Keeps" by S.J. Rozan

The last story in the book is very brief and takes place in the US following World War II. The main character is a Jewish girl who was in a Polish prison camp during the war. Her mother's cousin brought her and her younger brother to live in a small town in Ohio following the war. The children in the neighborhood taunt her and bully her brother into giving up his marbles. She is determined to win them back. An excellent story and very moving.

Other resources:

• A review by Sam Sattler at Book Chase. 
• At CrimeReads, some of the authors of the short stories discuss their stories.
• An article about this anthology at The Big Thrill.

Short Story Wednesday: Science Fiction Stories from 1990

These were not the short stories I was planning to read this week. But then my next door neighbor had a yard sale and I bought four anthologies from the Year's Best Science Fiction series, edited by Gardner Dozois. The one I decided to start reading was The Year's Best Science Fiction: Eighth Annual Collection.

I only read the first three stories, but that still totaled nearly 100 pages. The first story was a novella at about 53 pages and the other two were novelettes. I found all of them challenging and a bit overwhelming in one way or another. 

"Mr. Boy" by James Patrick Kelly

I had not heard of James Patrick Kelly before reading this novella about a 25-year-old man whose growth has been stunted by genetic manipulations, so that he remains in the body of 12-year-old boy. His mother purchased this modification for him, and the story is at least partly about the misuse of wealth. In this society these types of body modifications are not unusual and are carried to many extremes. I found the first half very weird but the second half was much better. The story was told in first person narrative by Mr. Boy.

In 1994, Kelly published a novel, Wildlife, that was a fix-up of this story and at least one other story featuring some of the same characters. I would be willing to give it a try someday.

"The Shobies' Story" by Ursula K. Le Guin

This story is set in a universe in which the ability to travel to another destination can be done instantaneously.  A group of people have volunteered to be the first humans to try this type of travel and see what effects it has on them, mentally and physically. The crew come from various planets and have various skills; some children are included. They first gather for a bonding experience before the flight.

The story is a part of the Hainish Cycle by Le Guin, but I have not read any of her science fiction writing, so I had no experience with that.  

I had an exceptionally hard time with this story and I had to read it twice to get any grip on it at all. I liked the first half but it went downhill in the second half. 

"The Caress" by Greg Egan

Another author I had not heard of previously. In the introduction to this story, Egan is described as a "hot new Australian writer."

This one is closer to my usual reading, sort of a police procedural set in the future. The protagonist is a policeman but he is enhanced. Policemen are trained from an early age, given drugs to prime their ability to deal with crime (while on the job), and their bodies are enhanced for strength and agility. The crime that is discovered is very strange. A woman of about 50 is found dead, her throat slit, in the living room of her house. In the basement downstairs, the policeman finds a chimera, a leopard's body with a woman's head. The chimera is in a coma. The dead woman turns out to be a scientist who created the chimera.

This was a strange story, very complex, with a lot of scientific explanations. But it was also very interesting, and I liked that it was told in first person, by the policeman.

There are two stories by Greg Egan in this anthology.

So I have 22 more stories and about 515 more pages to read in this collection. There are two more novellas in the anthology; one of them is "The Hemingway Hoax" by Joe Haldeman, about 80 pages long, which won both a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award for Best Novella in 1991.

A bonus: The painting on the cover is Sentinels by Michael Whelan.

Short Story Wednesday – Murder by the Book: Mysteries for Bibliophiles

This week I finished reading Murder by the Book, a short story anthology edited by Martin Edwards. It is a part of the British Library Crime Classics series, published in the US by Poisoned Pen Press. 

In early March, I read and reviewed the first six stories in this book. In that post I listed all the stories and authors.

I liked most of the remaining 11 stories in the book. The introductions that precede each story were excellent, providing some titles the author has written and other interesting facts related to the story or the author.

I have two favorites in the most recent batch of stories I read. Both of them would be easy to spoil so I am keeping the description of each brief.

"A Question of Character" by Victor Canning

(published in 1960)

Victor Canning is one of my favorite authors. He wrote a lot of books, some general fiction, some children's fiction and some spy fiction. I have stuck with the spy fiction so far, but I want to try some of his general fiction too. 

In Canning's story, a man and his wife are both authors. The husband wants a divorce, but he decides to kill his wife instead because she has become a more successful writer than he is.

"A Book of Honour" by John Creasey

(published in 1965)

John Creasey has written even more books than Victor Canning and written under many pseudonyms. I read some of his fiction when I was much younger and enjoyed it, but haven't read any recently. 

"A Book of Honour" is the story of an English bookseller in India who becomes friends with an Indian man who sells books on a much smaller scale. There is no murder, but a serious crime is involved, and the story is more about the friendship of the two men. I enjoyed Creasey's short story so much I will be seeking out more of his books to read.

This book also fits into the Bookish Books Reading Challenge at Bloggin' 'bout Books.

 

Short Story Wednesday: Murder by the Book

I recently started reading short stories from Murder by the Book: Mysteries for Bibliophiles, edited by Martin Edwards. It is a part of the British Library Crime Classics series, published in the US by Poisoned Pen Press. 

There are 16 stories in the book, and I have now read 6 of them. So far, I have enjoyed them all. Each story has a brief introduction of the author and the story, which were especially interesting to me for the authors that I had not read before.

"A Lesson in Crime" by G.D.H and M. Cole

The first story is a clever inverted mystery, which I always enjoy. Some other reviewers noted that this was a lesser story in the book, and maybe that was because the reader already knows who did the crime. The crime takes place on a train and the victim is a best-selling author.

"Trent and the Ministering Angel" by E.C. Bentley

E.C. Bentley is best known (to me at least) as the author of Trent's Last Case (which I have not yet read). Philip Trent, amateur detective, is featured in this story, and he solves a mystery for a lawyer who has suspicions related to his client's death and his will. This was a fine story, including both a rock garden and the dead man's library.

"A Slice of Bad Luck" by Nicholas Blake

I enjoyed this mostly because the main character is Nigel Strangeways, who featured in sixteen books by Blake. Strangeways solves a baffling puzzle of the death of an author at a meeting of the Assassins, a club similar to the real-life Detection Club. Nicholas Blake is the pseudonym used by the poet Cecil Day-Lewis. 

"The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts" by S.C. Roberts

S.C. Roberts was entirely new to me. He was a noted Sherlockian and a president of the Sherlock Holmes Society of London. This story is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, and the first one I have ever read. 

A member of the Megatherium club brings a problem to Holmes. A large number of  books in the circulating library of the Megatherium Club have disappeared and assumed to have been stolen. This was my least favorite story of the ones I have read, but it fits the requirements of this anthology perfectly, as it centers on books and a library.

"Malice Domestic" by Phillip MacDonald

This one centers on an author, not a best-selling author but his books are critically acclaimed, who begins having serious digestive problems, always after eating at home with his wife. I thought the ending was a bit obvious but nevertheless, it was a good picture of a marital relationship suffering difficulties. Very well written. I am motivated to read something by this author, either a novel or more short stories.

"A Savage Game" by A.A. Milne

The author of the Winnie the Pooh books wrote one detective novel, The Red House Mystery, which I enjoyed very much. This short story was published in The Evening Standard Detective Book in 1950. 

So far this is my favorite story from this book, and a very clever one. A mystery author bets his policeman friend that any creative writer could come up with the solution to a crime because all one has to do is invent a creative story to fit the facts. So the Chief Constable, Colonel Saxe, challenges him to do just that, supplying the puzzling details about the latest murder in a small town in his district. A brief story at only 10 pages, but very entertaining.

I am including a list of the titles and authors so you can see if any of the others interest you.

• "A Lesson in Crime" by G.D.H and M. Cole
• "Trent and the Ministering Angel" by E.C. Bentley
• "A Slice of Bad Luck" by Nicholas Blake
• "The Strange Case of the Megatherium Thefts" by S.C. Roberts
• "Malice Domestic" by Phillip MacDonald
• "A Savage Game" by A.A. Milne
• "The Clue in the Book" by Julian Symons
• "The Manuscript" by Gladys Mitchell
• "A Man and his Mother-in-Law" by Roy Vickers
• "Grey’s Ghost" by Michael Innes
• "Dear Mr. Editor…" by Christianna Brand 
• "Murder in Advance" by Marjorie Bremner
• "A Question of Character" by Victor Canning
• "The Book of Honour" by John Creasey
• "We Know You’re Busy Writing…" by Edmund Crispin
• "Chapter and Verse" by Ngaio Marsh

Short Story Wednesday: stories from Damn Near Dead

A couple of days ago, I read a few stories from Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir, edited by Dwayne Swierczynski, published by Busted Flush Press. The book was published in 2006, and all of the stories were first published in this anthology.

Each story is preceded by a short paragraph about the author, what he has written and other interesting facts. The stories also have an afterword from the author, from one paragraph to several, talking about the story and the author's motivation for writing it.

The stories are arranged in sections and the order is by birth year of the author. Thus the first section is made up of six authors born between 1970 and 1979. And the last section, which I read, was four stories by authors born between 1938 and 1947. 

The stories I read are:

• "Encore" by Milton T. Burton (b. 1947)
• "Cranked" by Bill Crider (b. 1941)
• "The Deadsters" by Robert Ward (b. 1945)
• "Just Friends" by John Harvey (b. 1938)

My favorite story in that group was "Cranked" by Bill Crider. It was fairly short, about 10 pages in length in this edition.

The story is about an elderly man who escapes from a nursing home. He leaves with only $21 and he takes his daughter's car. Unfortunately the car is on empty so he has to go to a nearby truck stop for gas, and ends up getting involved with a woman who just walked out of a meth house, as it was blown up, and two men who attempt to rob the truck stop. It was a great story; I enjoyed the humor, and the ending was perfect. The story was nominated for the Edgar and Anthony awards and won the Derringer Award.

In the Afterword for this story, Crider explains that it was a follow-up to a previous story, titled "Raining Willie." I found a copy of that story but I have not read it yet.

I also liked the stories by Milton T. Burton and John Harvey. However, the story by Robert Ward did not appeal to me at all; it leaned very close to horror. It was clever but much too gross and macabre for me.

Back in 2021, I reviewed some stories from Damn Near Dead 2, edited by Bill Crider and published by Busted Flush Press in 2010. 

Short Story Wednesday: Alfred Hitchcock's Happiness is a Warm Corpse

Most of the Alfred Hitchcock fiction anthologies that I have purchased were found at the Planned Parenthood Book Sale, but this one I purchased online. You can probably guess why: it has a lovely cover with skeletons.

These are the stories in the anthology:

• Once upon a Bank Floor... by James Holding, Jr
• The Egg Head by Rog Phillips
• Each Night He Pulled the Trigger by Robert Edmond Alter
• The Waiting Game by Pat Stadley
• Destruction is Always Arranged by Gilbert Ralston
• The Happy Death by John Cortez
• The Sweater by Richard O. Lewis
• IQ — 184 by Fletcher Flora
• Kill, If You Want Me! by Richard Deming
• Antique by Hal Ellson
• Mrs. Gilly and the Gigolo by Mary L. Roby
• This Day's Evil by Jonathan Craig
• Private and Confidential by Diane Frazer
• Never Come Back by Robert Colby

This anthology was published in 1969. The stories in it were originally published between 1957 and 1967. I read the first story in the book and I liked it very much. I hope that the rest of the stories are just as good.

"Once upon a Bank Floor... " by James Holding, Jr.

This story was fun, upbeat, and had a great ending. 

Two men are on an airplane trip, seated next to each other. One has a mystery story magazine for reading on the plane trip. The other man works for a bank; he tells a story about earlier in his banking career when the bank was robbed. It was in the early morning and he was alone in the bank at the time. I don't want to go into more details for fear of spoiling the story.

I don't know anything about the author, James Holding, Jr., although the name is familiar. Checking the Alfred Hitchcock Wiki, he had a good number of stories published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and various Hitchcock fiction anthologies. I would welcome more information on this author, if anyone knows more.

Grifters & Swindlers: edited by Cynthia Manson

Grifters & Swindlers is a collection of 17 short stories taken from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. The stories all center on tricksters and con artists who are plotting to cheat someone of their money or valuables. Like most short story collections, there were several stories I liked a lot, some stories that seemed predictable, and the rest were in between.

All of the stories were well worth reading. My favorites in the collection:

The selection by William Campbell Gault, "The Cackle Bladder", was very close to the final con in the movie The Sting, except it had a different twist. Of course, Gault wrote his story in 1950, years before The Sting was produced.

This is what Publisher's Weekly had to say about this story:

William Campbell Gault's 1950 "The Cackle Bladder'" will appeal to readers who relished the central setup of the 1973 movie, The Sting , except that Gault's description of the phony betting parlor, the characters and the scam are even more vivid.

David Morrell's story, "The Partnership", concerns two partners in a contracting firm who can't get along and scheme to get rid of each other. I liked this one because the ending was truly surprising and entertaining.

My absolute favorite story in the book was by Robert Halsted. As "Hostile Takeover" opens, the con artist narrator and Joy Sue have recently escaped from her home town. She is a country girl with little formal education; they form a partnership of sorts. I liked that the story kept me off balance; I could not figure out where it was going or who was up to what. I loved the way the story unfolds and the ending.

A few of the stories in the book were between 20 and 30 pages. Donald Westlake's story,  "Just the Lady We're Looking For", was a very short one at less than 7 pages. It was different and had a nice twist.

The other stories in the collection are:

• "The Frightening Frammis" by Jim Thompson 
• "Passing for Love" by Bill Crenshaw 
• "One of the Oldest Con Games" by Robert L. Fish 
• "How to Trap a Crook'' by Julian Symons 
• "The Man Who Flim-flammed Hiwassee County" by William M. Stephens
• "The Big Bunco" by William Bankier 
• "Playing it Cool" by Simon Brett 
• "Thieves' Bazaar'' by W. L. Heath
• "T'ang of the Suffering Dragon" by James Holding 
• "The Western Film Scam" by Francis M. Nevins, Jr. 
• "A Left-handed Profession" by Al Nussbaum
• "The Messenger" by Jacklyn Butler

The only problem I had with this anthology was reading a lot of stories on the same theme in a relatively short period of time. I think I might have enjoyed some of them more if they had been in a mixed bag of stories with no theme, so that I was not expecting the con (or the twist on the con).


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Publisher:   Carroll & Graf, 1993
Length:       287 pages
Format:      Hardcover
Genre:        Mystery, Short Stories
Source:      I purchased this book.