"Fire Burning Bright" by Brendan DuBois

I was very lucky to find The Dark Snow and Other Mysteries by Brendan DuBois at our local independent book store. I did not recognize the author but I already have several short story collections from Crippen & Landru, so I thought it was worth the gamble. Now I have found a new author and want to read more of his book length fiction too. Not that I need any new authors on my shelves.

"Fire Burning Bright" was a selection for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge, when I drew the 5 of Hearts.

This story is set in a rural area in a northeastern state. The protagonist, Jerry Auberg, had been an editor for various big city newspapers but had decided to move to a smaller town and purchase a weekly newspaper. By the time of this story, he has lived there five years and is beginning to feel settled in and accepted by his neighbors.

As the story opens, Jerry, who narrates the story, is going out to the scene of a fire that has just started. He reflects on the situation leading up to the fire. The town and the surrounding areas have been plagued by an arsonist, and it has had a bad effect on the town. People are suspicious and distrustful of their neighbors. The ending snuck up on me. It was very sad and affecting.

This short story was first published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in the Winter 1989 issue. It was also included in The Year's Best Mystery and Suspense Stories, 1990, edited by Edward D. Hoch.

Brendan DuBois published his first short story in 1986 in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine. There is a very nice introduction in The Dark Snow and Other Mysteries where DuBois talks about writing short stories in the science fiction genre for years before he finally got one published in a mystery magazine. Since then, most of his published works have been in the mystery genre. In 1994, his first novel, Dead Sand, was published. It was the first in a series about Lewis Cole, a former Department of Defense research analyst, retired in a small coastal town in New Hampshire. He has also published standalone novels, one of which is the well known Resurrection Day, an alternative history about what happens after the Cuban Missile Crisis escalates into a nuclear war.

My list of short stories for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.

"Watch Me Kill You!" by Norbert Davis

The first card I drew for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge this year was the 2 of Spades. Thus this was a Wild Card choice and I could pick any short story I wanted. This threw me for a loop as I was looking for more structure on that particular day, but I knew I had several books of short stories that I wanted to read in order, so I went looking for them. The book I chose was The Complete Cases of Max Latin by Norbert Davis, and the first story in that book is "Watch Me Kill You!".

Max Latin is a private detective with a difference; his office is a table in a restaurant where he spends much of his time. He presents himself as a shady character, and at the beginning of this story he has just gotten out of jail. He is approached by the husband of a very rich woman who is known as a collector of art; the wife wants some pieces of art painted by her cousin, who refuses to sell them to her. Even though this is an unusual assignment, Latin sees this as an easy route to some cash, so he takes it on. When he goes to visit the cousin, the cousin is lying on the floor, dead, in his studio. Much mayhem ensues and Latin investigates.

The Complete Cases of Max Latin consists of five stories originally published in Dime Detective magazine between July 1941 and October 1943. The book is 225 pages long and each story is 40-50 pages long, and divided into chapters. "Watch Me Kill You!" is 50 pages long (in trade paper format) and has six chapters. The book has a introduction by John D. MacDonald, written in 1988 for The Adventures of Max Latin published by Mysterious Press. The introduction alone is worth the price of the book.

Norbert Davis is known for the humor in his writing. Since humor in mysteries is not my favorite thing, I wasn't sure about his writing, but I have purchased all of the books in the Doan and Carstairs series, and I have been planning to read those for a while. This story gave me a taste, and I will be continuing with more of his works.

My list of short stories for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.


If you want to know more about Norbert Davis or his Max Latin stories, you could start here:

• Norbert Davis at The Thrilling Detective Web Site, a piece which has links to other sources.
• Max Latin at The Thrilling Detective Web Site

Deal Me In Short Story Challenge

For the second year I will be participating in the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge, hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.

In 2015, I kept up with the reading and reviewing of short stories in the first half of the year, but fell off in the second half. Nevertheless, I am eagerly joining in again, and even increasing my participation. I have a lot of short story books, I did enjoy almost all of the short stories I read last year, and I want to keep the momentum going.

What is the goal of the project?

To read 52 short stories in 2016 (that’s only one per week). There are other variations that allow a lower story requirement, reading as few as one a month if preferred.

The challenge is set up so that the participants choose the short stories they plan to read for the year, and assign each to a card in the standard 52 card deck. Each week you choose a card and read that story. It is not a requirement to post some thoughts on the stories read, but many participants do share their experiences on their blog.

Below is my roster of short stories to read:

♦ Diamonds ♦

Ace – "Miser's Gold" by Ellery Queen (EQMS)
2 – WILD CARD
3 – "Anniversary Gift" by John Collier (EQMS)
4 – "Is Betsy Blake Still Alive?" by Robert Bloch (EQMS)
5 – "Tropical Disturbance" by Lester Dent (EQMS)
6 – "Adventure of the Martian Crown Jewels" by Poul Anderson (EQMS)
7 – "Hurry, Hurry, Hurry!" by Paul Gallico (EQMS)
8 – "The Footprint in the Sky" by John Dickson Carter (EQMS)
9 – "Murder is a Public Matter" by Ross Macdonald (EQMS)
10 – "The Habit of Widowhood" by Robert Barnard (HW)
Jack – "The Women at the Funeral" by Robert Barnard (HW)
Queen – "Dog Television" by Robert Barnard (HW)
King – "Perfect Honeymoon" by Robert Barnard (HW)
                                            

♣ Clubs ♣

Ace – "Neck" by Roald Dahl (TOU)

2 – WILD CARD

3 – "The Phantom of the Subway" by Cornell Woolrich (MSA)

4 – "Professional Man" by David Goodis (BANC)

5 – "The Homecoming" by Dorothy B. Hughes (BANC)

6 – "Nothing to Worry About" by Day Keene (BANC)

7 – "Gun Crazy" by MacKinley Kantor (BANC)

8 – "The Chicken Soup Kid" by R. L. Stevens (MOM)

9 – "The Same Old Grind" by Bill Pronzini (MOM)

10 – "The Norwegian Apple Mystery" by James Holding (MOM)

Jack – "The Last of the Winnebagos" by Connie Willis (IT)

Queen – "Schwarzschild Radius" by Connie Willis (IT)

King – "Ado" by Connie Willis (IT)

♠ Spades ♠

Ace – "Dead Man" by James M. Cain (MSA)

2 – WILD CARD

3 – "That Hell-Bound Train" by Robert Bloch (MSA)

4 – "Sweet Fever" by Bill Pronzini (MSA)

5 – "The Man Who Loved the Midnight Lady" by Barry N. Malzberg (MSA)

6 – "Death Ship" by Richard Matheson (TTA)

7 – "Needle in a Timestack" by Robert Silverberg (TTA)

8 – "Another Story or A Fisherman of the Inland Sea" by Ursula K. LeGuin (TTA)

9 – "Yesterday was Monday" by Theodore Sturgeon (TTA)

10 – "Fish Night" by Joe Lansdale (TTA)

Jack – "What If" by Isaac Asimov (TTA)

Queen – "In the Tube" by E. F. Benson (TTA)

King – "If Ever I Should Leave You" by Pamela Sargent (TTA)

♥ Hearts ♥

Ace – "Skin" by Roald Dahl (TOU)

2 – WILD CARD

3 – "Nunc Dimittus" by Roald Dahl (TOU)

4 – "The Way Up to Heaven" by Roald Dahl (TOU)

5 – "Fire Burning Bright" by Brendan DuBois (DSOM)

6 – "A Dark Snow" by Brendan DuBois (DSOM)

7 – "A Ticket Out" by Brendan DuBois (DSOM)

8 – "Precious: Winners and Losers" by Michael Malone (RCBC)

9 – "Charmaine: White Trash Noir" by Michael Malone (RCBC)

10 – "The House Party" by Stanley Ellin (SHOS)

Jack – "Death of an Old-Fashioned Girl" by Stanley Ellin (SHOS)

Queen – "The Twelfth Statue" by Stanley Ellin (SHOS)

King – "The Last Bottle in the World" by Stanley Ellin (SHOS)

Because I read mostly from the mystery genre, the majority of the stories chosen are mysteries. But not all of them. The short story anthologies that these stories come from are:

• Murder on the Menu edited by Carol-Lynn Rössel Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg, and Isaac Asimov (MOM)
• The Specialty of the House and Other Stories by Stanley Ellin (SHOS)  
• The Time Traveler's Almanac edited by Ann and Jeff Vandemere (TTA)
• Midnight Specials: An Anthology for Train Buffs and Suspense Aficionados edited by Bill Pronzini (MSA)
• Ellery Queen's Murder-- in Spades! edited by Ellery Queen (EQMS)
• A Dark Snow and Other Mysteries by Brendan DuBois (DSOM)
• Impossible Things by Connie Willis (IT)
• Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Dahl (TOU)
• Red Clay, Blue Cadillac: Stories of Twelve Southern Women  by Michael Malone (RCBC)
• The Habit of Widowhood by Robert Barnard (HW)
• The Best American Noir of the Century edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler (BANC)

"The People Across the Canyon" by Margaret Millar

Continuing on my goal to catch up with the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge, for the Five of Hearts I read "The People Across the Canyon" by Margaret Millar.

The story starts with Marion Borton worrying about neighbors moving across the canyon. She is not happy about giving up her privacy in the secluded area where she and her husband had been the first to build a home. Her husband, Paul, thinks that this is a good thing; maybe the new neighbors will have some children that their eight-year-old daughter Cathy can play with. In the following days, Cathy reports on meeting the new couple at the house and seems to be obsessed with them. They represent all the things that her parents are not, in her eyes.

The end of the story is very haunting and a bit creepier than I usually like. Yet I enjoyed the way that the story is presented and I didn't expect the twists that it takes.

I selected this story from The Couple Next Door: Selected Short Stories by Margaret Millar.  The book was edited by Tom Nolan, author of the biography of Ross Macdonald (the pseudonym of Kenneth Millar, Margaret's husband). He also wrote the lengthy introduction to this book of short stories which includes a good bit about Millar's life and her writing. This book is part of the Lost Classics Series, published by Crippen & Landru.

This story was originally published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, October 1962. It has since been published in several anthologies: A Century of Great Suspense Stories, ed. Jeffery Deaver; Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, ed. Denise Hamilton; and most recently  published in Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, ed. Sarah Weinman.

The story is available here, read by Douglas Greene, publisher of Crippen & Landru.


My list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.

Deal Me In 2015: More Short Stories

This year has passed by fast for me. Work has been very busy during the second half of the year, and that has meant less time and energy for reading, reviewing, and blogging. I fell far behind on my short story challenge and I intend to catch up because I plan to continue on the challenge in 2016.

For the Ace of Spades, I read "Stella: Red Clay" from Red Clay, Blue Cadillac by Michael Malone. It was a corker. Just wonderful. Set in a small town in the South, it is the story of Stella Dora Doyle, a has-been movie star, and Buddy Hayes, whose father dated her when they were in high school. Stella is on trial for murder after her husband is found shot with her gun outside their mansion.

The story follows Buddy and his encounters with Stella from his childhood into adulthood. Both he and his father have been mildly obsessed with Stella all their lives. It is a brief but telling picture of a small town and how its denizens react to the ups and downs of Stella's life.

The story won the Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1997.

I covered another story in Malone's book of short stories back in February ("Marie: Blue Cadillac"), and I am going to repeat some parts of that post here.

January Magazine featured a very long article by J. Kingston Pierce on Michael Malone's books, including an interview, in December 2002. Here is a extract from the interview related to Red Clay, Blue Cadillac.

Can you tell me what, in your mind, distinguishes Southern women from those reared in other parts of the United States?

They're like women in other parts of America, just more so. As Gloria Steinem said about Ginger Rogers: She was doing everything Fred Astaire was doing, just doing it backwards in high heels. Well, Southern women are doing and enduring what other women have to do and endure, but (at least until recently) they had to do it in heels and hats and white gloves and makeup and a sweet smile, with maybe a glass of bourbon and a cigarette to get them through the magnolia part of being a steel magnolia. The women in Red Clay, Blue Cadillac are all very strong people. Sometimes they have to pretend otherwise.

That description -- "white gloves and makeup and a sweet smile" -- is so true and very disturbing. 

I have also read two of Malone's novels, also set in the South: Uncivil Seasons and Time's Witness.

My list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.

"Positive Vetting" by Stephen Murray

I am behind on my short story reading and also on my posts for the Deal Me In Challenge. Every other week I draw one card from a deck to randomly pick from a group of short shories. This has been a very successful experiment to see if I will grow to appreciate short stories. This is the 13th story I have read out of my planned 26 stories for the challenge. (My list of short stories for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.)

"Positive Vetting" is another great story from 1st CULPRIT: A Crime Writer's Annual, edited by Liza Cody and Michael Z. Lewin. And this time I was introduced to an author that is totally new to me: Stephen Murray.

This story is set in London and features a narrator telling about a murder he investigated back in 1944. The story is as much about how the war affected those involved, whether on the home front or in the fighting, as it is about the murder. A fine story with some twists and turns along the way.

Stephen Murray is the author of six crime fiction novels featuring Chief Inspector Alec Stainton, published between 1987 and 1994. Other than that, I don't know that much about him. Martin Edwards at Do You Write Under Your Own Name? is a fan. There are two posts at his blog featuring Murray: Susan Moody and Stephen Murray and Forgotten Book - Death and Transfiguration.

"Freud at Thirty Paces" by Sara Paretsky

Continuing on my journey with the Deal Me in Short Story Challenge, this week I drew the Jack of Hearts and thus read  "Freud at Thirty Paces" by Sara Paretsky.  The story was first published in 1st CULPRIT: A Crime Writer's Annual edited by Liza Cody and Michael Z. Lewin in 1992. I have discovered, in only the few stories I have thus far encountered in the Crime Writer's Annuals, that the stories are all written by crime writer's but not all the stories are crime fiction. This one is humorous and it is interesting, with a substantial story, but it is not about a crime.

What I found very curious about this story is that is was also published a year later in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Seventh Annual Collection edited by Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow. As far as I can tell, the story is neither fantasy or horror. It is not strictly realistic, but I can't see it classified as any kind of fantasy. I would love to know why it was included in that volume.

The short introduction to the story in that volume (written by Terri Windling) describes Sara Paretsky as "the acclaimed bestselling author of the V.I. Warshawski mysteries. Her work is informed by a keen ear for dialogue and a sly sense of irony, yet retains a strong humanity. Vic, as only her friends may call her, works Chicago, where Paretsky lives."

The one sentence summary of the story is:

"Freud at Thirty Paces" is a hilarious account of two men at war with each other whose weapons are theory, Freud, and their own enlarged egos.

I cannot think of anything to add to that. I enjoyed the story, it was entertaining, and it was not the story I expected.

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read. My list of short stories for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.

"The Specialty of the House" by Stanley Ellin

Deal Me In Short Story #11

This week I drew the Five of Spades, and I read another story with a food theme from Murder on the Menu. The story was written by Stanley Ellin, known both for his short stories and his mystery novels. Per Wikipedia, "He was awarded three Edgar Allan Poe Awards (Edgar Award). His first Edgar was for the short story "The House Party" in 1954, then for the short story "The Blessington Method" in 1956, and his third for the novel The Eighth Circle in 1959."

"The Specialty of the House" was first published in 1948 in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, then published again several times in various anthologies. It is about two men who become addicted to an exclusive restaurant and spend every evening dining there. It is a story with a twist, but most readers will guess what it is early on in the story. That is intentional, I am sure, and heightens the tension. The story was adapted as a TV episode for Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1959 and then again in 1987. I can see that it would be perfect for that show.

This isn't a standard mystery story (if there is such a thing). This one is really a horror story. That is what I was thinking as I read it, and my opinion was confirmed by the title of one of the books it is compiled in: The 3rd Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories. It is not going to be my favorite short story ever. I am not fond of horror and the subject was icky. But... it is very clever and very readable, and it was the first short story that Stanley Ellin published. That is pretty impressive.

Moira at Clothes in Books wrote a very entertaining post recently about another Stanley Ellin short story, "The Corruption of Officer Avakadian". Just based on the title, that one sounds good.

I was so impressed with this story that I rushed to order a copy of The Specialty of the House and Other Stories: The Complete Mystery Tales, 1948-1978, published by Mysterious Press in 1979.

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. My list of short stories is here. The challenge is hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.

"True Thomas" by Reginald Hill

This week I drew the Queen of Spades, which led me to another story from 2nd Culprit: A Crime Writers' Annual, an anthology edited by Liza Cody and Michael Z. Lewin. This week's story was written by Reginald Hill (1936 - 2012), the author of the Dalziel and Pascoe mystery series, the Joe Sixsmith series, and many standalone novels, some written under the pseudonym Patrick Ruell. This story was first published in 1993 in this anthology.

"True Thomas" is not really a mystery story. There are characters who are policemen or lawyers or criminals, there is a crime, and there is a body. But there is no crime solving. The story really poses the questions: How honest can we be in our daily life? When is honesty more hurtful than helpful?

The story is told in an interesting way, using the ballad of True Thomas as the basis of a wager between the defence counsel and DI Tom Tyler. In literature, True Thomas, also known as Thomas the Rhymer, was carried off by the "Queen of Elfland" and returns unable to tell a lie. Tyler is upbraiding Sylvie Morphet (who he calls "Miss bloody Muffet", although not to her face) for telling lies and twisting the truth to defend her client, who has been set free. She challenges him to spend a 24 hour period telling only the truth.

Tyler thinks this will be a fairly easy bet that he can win, but in the next 24 hours he gets himself in trouble with his wife, his in-laws, and at work. Although not really a humorous story, this is a story that entertains and provides the reader with much to ponder.

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. My list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.

"Even the Queen" by Connie Willis

Deal Me In Short Story #9

My short story this week was "Even the Queen" by Connie Willis, an American author of science fiction novels and short stories.  Three of the stories I picked for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge were from Impossible Things, which collects 11 stories by Willis. This is the first piece of fiction I have read by this author. I plan to read some of her Oxford time travel series, but have not tried them yet. They are all very long, 500 - 600 pages each.

It turned out that this did not feel like a sci fi story at all. It takes place in a near future setting, and some there are some scientific advancements discussed but that is about it. Still a new experience for me, because I don't read much non-genre fiction. This is really just a story of three generations of women who gather because they are worried about a young woman in the family.

I wasn't sure how to review this, it touches on a taboo subject. But then I realized I did not really have to delve that deep into the story because part of the fun of reading the story is discovering what the characters are talking about.

The premise is that Traci, a lawyer, gets several phone calls from members of her family because her daughter has joined a radical group. There is talk of cults and deprogramming. Traci meets with her mother and other female relatives at a restaurant to talk the problem over. The results are humorous and illustrate that family dynamics will be the same no matter how society changes. It is a feminist story which Willis wrote because she had "gotten a bunch of flack recently for not writing about Women's Issues."

A quote from the story:

In the first fine flush of freedom after the Liberation, I had entertained hopes that it would change everything - that it would somehow do away with inequality and matriarchal dominance and those humorless women determined to eliminate the word "manhole" and third-person singular pronouns from the language.

Of course it didn't. Men still make more money, "herstory" is still a blight on the semantic landscape, and my mother can still say, "Oh, Traci!" in a tone that reduces me to pre-adolescence.

"Even the Queen" won both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for Best Short Story in 1992. It has been included in many anthologies.

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. My list of short stories is here. The challenge is hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.

"For Esmé–With Love and Squalor" by J. D. Salinger

Deal Me In Short Story #8

This week I drew the 4 of Spades, which corresponded to "For Esmé–With Love and Squalor" from the book Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger. As I explained in my post on another short story in this collection, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish," I read most of Salinger's stories long ago. It is lovely to read them again and experience them anew.

The story opens with a man describing his encounter with two children, Esmé and Charles, in a town in Devon, England. The narrator is a soldier, and had just completed an invasion training course. Esmé offers to write to the soldier, and requests that he write a story for her. She suggests he make it "extremely squalid and moving."

The second part of the story is told in third person and describes Staff Sergeant X and his fellow soldiers, "in Gaufurt, Bavaria, several weeks after V-E Day." It is definitely very moving. Even before I started reading this section, with little memory of what it described, I became very emotional.

This story was immediately popular when it was first published in The New Yorker in 1950 and continues to be one of Salinger's best known stories. Before I started rereading the stories in Nine Stories, I did not know about Salinger's wartime experiences, which are thought to have influenced his writing. Reading this story and learning more about Salinger was a great experience. I will continue reading the stories in this book and find copies of the two other books containing novellas by Salinger (Franny and Zooey and Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction).

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. My list of short stories is here. The challenge is hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis.

T

"Recipe for a Happy Marriage" by Nedra Tyre

Deal Me In Short Story #7

This week I drew the Ace of Hearts and thus I read "Recipe for a Happy Marriage" by Nedra Tyre. Some of my choices for the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis were deliberate. For my list of short stories to read throughout 2015, I chose authors I was familiar with or wanted to return to. But this story was a total unknown. I knew nothing about the author.

Nedra Tyre was born in Georgia in 1921 and worked as a social worker in Virginia. Her short stories were published in various mystery magazines starting in 1955. She also published several suspense novels. This story was first published in the March 1971 issue of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine.

I found the story in the anthology, Murder on the Menu, so I knew it would feature food in some way. The story is told by a woman who is laid up in her bed with a broken ankle. She tells us about her interview with a local reporter who is writing up an article on love. The narrator has had several husbands, all of which have predeceased her. There is a nice twist at the end. Although I suspect the experienced mystery reader could predict the ending, it was still a very enjoyable tale.

Nedra Tyre has a story, "A Nice Place to Stay", in the anthology, Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives, edited by Sarah Weinman. Weinman has a very interesting website called Domestic Suspense devoted to her book, which gathers information about each of the authors featured in the book. John at Pretty Sinister Books has reviewed Weinman's book here.

"The Duke" by Eric Wright

Deal Me In Short Story #6

This week I drew the King of Spades, which corresponded to "The Duke" by Eric Wright, a Canadian mystery writer. He was born in London, England and immigrated to Canada in 1951. His best-known series features Inspector Charlie Salter of the Metropolitan Toronto Police. Two of his novels have won the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel and he has also won awards for his short stories. I have only read one novel by Wright, The Night the Gods Smiled (reviewed here).



A description of the hero of his story:

After half a lifetime of not being very much at home in the world, Duke Luscombe had finally found exactly the right job. He was a cook, trained in Montréal by a catering company to run the kitchen of a construction camp. The training could not have been very extensive: the Duke could cook about twenty different menus, though the same vegetables appeared on most of them, but because some of the items, like steaks and chops, were offered at least once a week, and because there was a roast or a boiled ham every Sunday, some of the menus, like pork tenderloin, appeared only once a month, giving the Duke's repertoire an appearance of being much bigger than it really was. But his skills matched the needs of the men.

Duke is an obsessive man, guarding his domain and its contents at all times. He is a man satisfied with his simple life, and the men accept him for what he is. Until a troublemaker comes along and sees that he can take advantage of Duke's nature.

This is a very short story and I won't go into the plot further than that. What makes this story different is that the narrator addresses the reader briefly at the beginning and the end with a fairly straightforward story in between. I liked this approach and I liked the twist at the end very much. The author set it up very well and certainly had me fooled.

The story was first published in 1993 in 2nd Culprit: A Crime Writers' Annual edited by Liza Cody and Michael Z. Lewin. I bought this book of short stories because of the gorgeous cover, and now I am finally reading some of the stories.

"The Duke" has since been published in A Killing Climate, an anthology of the author's stories and in two collections of short stories by Canadian authors (Iced: A New Noir Anthology of Cold, Hard Fiction and Mystery Ink).

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. My list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger

Deal Me In Short Story #5

This week I drew the 3 of Spades, which corresponded to "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" from the book Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger. I read this story years ago, along with all his other short stories and novellas. I remember loving his stories, and was eager to read them again, but afraid I would be disappointed. I was not.

It seems that with most short stories it is impossible to say much without revealing spoilers, so this is just a brief introduction. Several of J. D. Salinger's stories and novellas feature one or more members of the Glass family. This was the first one to do that, and it relates the activities of one day when Seymour Glass and his wife Muriel are on vacation in Florida. At the opening of the story, Muriel is talking to her mother on the telephone, and it is obvious that her mother is concerned about Seymour's mental state. Seymour has recently returned from Germany, where he was stationed in the Army.

Salinger submitted this story to the New Yorker in 1947, and editors at that magazine worked with him to revise the story. It was published in 1948 and was met with much acclaim.  J. D. Salinger is a very famous writer, and most famous for his decision to stop writing and stay out of the public eye. All of that is well documented and I am not in any way an expert, so that is all I will say about that. He is the author of one novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which is probably the most well-known work. I loved that too when I read it initially but I am less sure that I will love it when I re-read it.

So the takeaway from reading this story is that I am eager to read more of them. One more is on my Deal Me In Short Story list, and I will be reading the rest throughout the year. There are two other books that contain novellas or short stories, and I plan to find copies of those and re-read them too.

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. My list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.
 

Deal Me In 2015: Story #4 ("Marie: Blue Cadillac" by Michael Malone)

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. My list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.

This week I drew the 2 of Spades, which corresponded to the story titled "Maria: Blue Cadillac" from a book of twelve stories about Southern women, Red Clay, Blue Cadillac. The stories are all written by Michael Malone. It shows how much I admire his writing when I purchase a book of his short stories, all very Southern in flavor, or so the reviews say. I usually avoid Southern literature.

"Marie: Blue Cadillac" by Michael Malone

I am discovering that a person's reactions to a short story is a very personal thing. (Sounds obvious but I am new to this.) In reviews I have read on this book of short stories, some reviewers pick this as the best story, others don't like it at all. 

On my first read of this story, I did not care for it at all. It felt like it had no structure. It seemed more like a vignette, like a small snapshot. I had a hard time getting into it and it ended somewhat ambiguously. 

I don't know if I read it too fast or I was too tired, but on a second read, I found it does have more depth.  The characterizations are good; some of the descriptions are wonderful. This story seemed like two stories intertwined. Marie is a beautiful young blonde, driving to Graceland in a blue Cadillac convertible to fulfill her mother's last wish. Braxton is "a high-tech sales rep going home to Memphis for his mama's sake to eat Thanksgiving dinner." His stewardess wife has just left him for a Brazilian oilman. They end up spending a few hours together.

January Magazine featured a very long article by J. Kingston Pierce on Michael Malone's books, including an interview, in December 2002. Here is a extract from the interview related to Red Clay, Blue Cadillac.

Can you tell me what, in your mind, distinguishes Southern women from those reared in other parts of the United States?

They're like women in other parts of America, just more so. As Gloria Steinem said about Ginger Rogers: She was doing everything Fred Astaire was doing, just doing it backwards in high heels. Well, Southern women are doing and enduring what other women have to do and endure, but (at least until recently) they had to do it in heels and hats and white gloves and makeup and a sweet smile, with maybe a glass of bourbon and a cigarette to get them through the magnolia part of being a steel magnolia. The women in Red Clay, Blue Cadillac are all very strong people. Sometimes they have to pretend otherwise.

By the way, I hear that Sourcebooks had another title in mind for this collection of stories.

They wanted to call it All the Wrong Women, but I told them that you obviously don't know Southern women. Just because they murder their husbands doesn't make them bad people.

That statement -- "white gloves and makeup and a sweet smile" -- is so true and very disturbing. My feelings about that subject probably mean I would benefit from reading more books about and set in the South, not less.

Deal Me In 2015: Story #3 ("The Case of the Shaggy Caps" by Ruth Rendell)

Every other week I draw a random card to determine what short story I will read for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge. What are the odds that I would pick two Ruth Rendell stories in a row? Last week I read a story by Ruth Rendell and the protagonist was Inspector Wexford. I had forgotten that I had included two stories by that author in my list, and that both featured her series character.

It was a happy accident, because it gave me the opportunity to compare the stories. This story is from Murder on the Menu, but it was first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine in November 1977. By 1977, nine Inspector Wexford novels had been published. One of Rendell's most well-known standalone novels, A Judgement in Stone, was published in 1977. The story that I read (review here) two weeks ago, "The Mouse in the Corner," was first published in 1991 so they were written 14 years apart.

"The Case of the Shaggy Caps" by Ruth Rendell

Wexford partners with Inspector Burden, and their relationship is one of the best parts of this series. Here is Rendell's description of the two in this story:

Wexford, getting on for sixty, was a tall, ungainly, rather ugly  man who had once been fat to the point of obesity but had slimmed to gauntness for reasons of health. Nearly twenty years his junior, Burden had the slenderness of a man who has always been thin. His face was ascetic, handsome in a frosty way. The older man, who had a good wife who looked after him devotedly, nevertheless always looked as if his clothes came off the peg from the War on Want Shop, while the younger, a widower, was sartorially immaculate.

In this story, Hannah Kingman's death was the result of a fall from the balcony of a 5th floor apartment in a high rise. Wexford has been on a holiday in Italy, and Burden has been handling the case, which was initially thought to be suicide. Then Hannah's brother comes in and accuses Hannah's husband of attempting to poison her a week before her death at a dinner party. The party was attended by only four people, Hannah, her husband, the brother, and the husband's ex-girlfriend. Burden was convinced that something fishy is going on but the evidence doesn't agree.

This is another substantial and enjoyable story, where Wexford and Burden solve a mystery, although they may have trouble proving that they are right. The story is fairly long, about 28 pages in the paperback that I read. Even at that length there is not much room for characterization beyond the two investigators, who have an interesting relationship. Burden has his prejudices, and Wexford is the voice of reason.

My Deal Me In list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge. Every week he gathers links from participants. If you are interested in a wide variety of short stories (and sometimes essays and poems), try his latest Wrap Up post.

Deal Me In 2015: Story #2 ("The Mouse in the Corner" by Ruth Rendell)

Every other week in 2015 I will be drawing one card from a deck to randomly pick from a group of short shories. This is an experiment to see if I will grow to appreciate short stories more if I give them a chance. As usual I have gotten very into this new project and wish I had chosen to read one a week. (My Deal Me In list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.)

So far I have had only good experiences. My second card was the 10 of hearts, and the story is "The Mouse in the Corner" by Ruth Rendell. Ruth Rendell is an author of mystery and suspense novels, but she also has written a lot of short stories. This one was first published in 1991 in Esquire Magazine, but I found the story in a collection titled 1st Culprit: A Crime Writers' Annual edited by Liza Cody and Michael Z. Lewin.

"The Mouse in the Corner" is an Inspector Wexford story. Rendell has written a long series featuring Wexford and his second-in-command, Mike Burden. In this short mystery, Wexford is investigating the death of Tom Peterlee, beaten to death in his own home. His body is discovered by his stepdaughter, Arlene, who lives in a caravan close by. Tom and his wife, his brother and his wife, and his mother all live in separate cottages in very close proximity to each other. Wexford thinks that Tom's wife is the guilty party but she is alibied by a friend who lives nearby. He keeps returning to talk to Arlene to try to break down her testimony.

At least in the earlier books in the series, Mike Burden is an opinionated and prejudiced man. This story gives a glimpse of that behavior and the contrast between Mike and his boss.

Why was he so sure Arlene Heddon had the answer? Mike Burden, his second-in-command at Kingsmarkham CID, said with contempt that at any rate she was more attractive than the sister-in-law and the widow. With his usual distaste for those whose lives failed to approximate fairly closely to his own, he spoke scathingly of ‘the Peterlee girl’ as if having no job and no proper roof over one’s head directly conduced to homicide.
‘Her name,’ Wexford said rather dourly, ‘is Heddon. It was her father’s name. Heather Peterlee, if you remember, was a Mrs Heddon before she re-married.’ He added, wondering as he did so why he bothered to indulge Burden’s absurd prejudices. ‘A widow, incidentally.’
Quick as a flash, Burden came back with, ‘What did her first husband die of?’
‘Oh God, Mike, some bone disease. We went into all that. But back to Arlene Heddon; she’s a very intelligent young woman, you know.’
‘No, I don’t know. You must be joking. Intelligent girls don’t live on benefit in caravans with unemployed welders.’
‘What a snob you are.’
‘Married welders. I’m not just a snob, I’m a moralist. Intelligent girls do well at school, go on to further education, get suitable well-paid jobs and buy themselves homes on mortgages.’
‘Somehow and somewhere along the line Arlene Heddon missed out on that. In any case, I didn’t say she was academically inclined. She’s sharp, she’s clever, she’s got a good brain.’

In the end, Wexford gets the answer but not the one he expected. The story has some interesting social commentary and a twist at the end.

The story is quite substantial and satisfying. It was made into an episode of the Ruth Rendell Mysteries in 1992.

Deal Me In 2015: Story #1 (Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl)

The first card I drew for the Deal Me In Short Story challenge was the 6 of Spades. Thus, my first story is "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl.

This was one of the few stories in my Deal Me In list that  I was already familiar with, by reputation. It had been discussed under the topic of unusual murder weapons. This story is in a collection of mystery stories, and the theme of the collection is food and eating. When I chose this story for my list, I had no idea how well known it is.

Mary Maloney waits eagerly for her husband, a policeman, to come home from work; it is their regular night to go out for dinner. She is six months pregnant, and is portrayed  as a loving wife. When her husband arrives, he is short with her, and decides to break some bad news to her; that he will be leaving her but she will be taken care of. She finds it difficult to believe or to react to; on automatic, she goes into the kitchen to prepare supper.

This story was chilling and dark but not depressing. It was a great read and it was not what I expected, even knowing a bit about it going in.

Reading this story has convinced me to try more Roald Dahl short stories. While looking into the story I saw some comparisons to another story by this author, "The Landlady." I read it and it is just as chilling as "Lamb to the Slaughter." That story won the 1960 Edgar for Best Short Story. In 1954, Dahl won the Best Short Story Edgar for "Someone Like You."

I read this story in Murder on the Menu, but it has been reprinted in many collections. It is available online here or here.

Resources:

• The story was adapted for television more than once. This post at The mOvie blog talks about the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode (starring Barbara Bel Geddes) and includes screenshots.
• This post at James Bond memes describes how the story resulted from a dinner conversation with Ian Fleming.
• Prashant at Chess, Comics, Crosswords, Books, Music, Cinema has reviewed this story.

My Deal Me In list of short stories is here. Jay at Bibliophilopolis hosts the challenge.

Deal Me In Short Story Challenge 2015

I am a sucker for challenges, but I am really trying to rein myself in on challenges in 2015. However, I have also had a goal in mind to experiment with reading short stories. I began researching how many books of short stories I have and I was amazed to find that I have over twenty books (some of them quite large) and that does not count any that are on the Kindle. In the last two or three years I have read maybe two stories from those books, and around ten short stories online.

Recently I ran into the Deal Me In Short Story Challenge, hosted by Jay at Bibliophilopolis, and I hope that challenge will help me ease into short story reading. The goal of the project is to read 52 short stories in 2015 (that’s only one per week). The challenge is set up so that the participants choose the short stories they plan to read for the year, and assign each to a card in the standard 52 card deck. Each week you choose a card and read that story. I think most participants post comments on the short stories they read, but that is not a requirement.

Luckily, there are variations which allow the participants to sign up for lower amounts of short stories over the year, anywhere from 12 to 26. I am enthusiastic about this challenge but I know it unrealistic for me ... a novice short story reader... to start out at one a week. So I will go for 26 short stories during the year. I will draw a card every other Friday, and I will start on January 9, 2015.

For a more complete explanation of the challenge and some examples of how other bloggers approach it... see this post.

Here is my list of stories:

HEARTS (short stories by women)
Ace – "Recipe for a Happy Marriage" by Nedra Tyre
2 – "The Case of the Shaggy Caps" by Ruth Rendell
3 – "McGowney's Miracle" by Margaret Millar
4 – "The Couple Next Door" by Margaret Millar
5 – "The People Across the Canyon" by Margaret Millar
6 – "Notions" by Margaret Millar
7 – "Even the Queen" by Connie Willis
8 – "Winter's Tale" by Connie Willis
9 – "At the Rialto" by Connie Willis
10 – "The Mouse in the Corner" by Ruth Rendell
Jack – "Freud at Thirty Paces" by Sara Paretsky
Queen – "A Little Missionary Work" by Sue Grafton
King – "Turning Point" by Anthea Fraser

SPADES (short stories by men)
Ace – "Red Clay" by Michael Malone
2 – "Blue Cadillac" by Michael Malone
3 – "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J.D. Salinger
4 – "For Esme – With Love and Squalor" by J.D. Salinger
5 – "The Specialty of the House" by Stanley Ellin
6 – "Lamb to the Slaughter" by Roald Dahl
7 – "When No Man Pursueth" by Isaac Asimov
8 – "The Theft of the Used Teabag" by Edward D. Hoch
9 – "The Refugees" by T. S. Stribling
10 – "Trip Trap" by Ian Rankin
Jack – "Positive Vetting" by Stephen Murray
Queen – "True Thomas" by Reginald Hill
King – "The Duke" by Eric Wright

Because I read mostly from the mystery genre, the majority of the stories chosen are mysteries. But not all of them. The short story anthologies that these stories come from are:

• Murder on the Menu edited by Carol-Lynn Rössel Waugh, Martin H. Greenberg, and Isaac Asimov
• 1st CULPRIT: A Crime Writer's Annual edited by Liza Cody and Michael Z. Lewin 
• 2nd CULPRIT: A Crime Writer's Annual edited by Liza Cody and Michael Z. Lewin 
• Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger
• Impossible Things by Connie Willis
• The Couple Next Door by Margaret Millar; edited by Tom Nolan
• Red Clay, Blue Cadillac: Stories of Twelve Southern Women  by Michael Malone