Short Story Wednesday: "I Am Not Fluffy" by Liza Cody

I have only read one novel by Liza Cody, Dupe, the first book in her Anna Lee detective series. I also read one of her short stories. In both cases, I was very impressed with her writing. So when I noticed that she had published a second collection of short stories, My People And Other Crime Stories, I purchased it. 

"I Am Not Fluffy" is the first story in the new collection. It is about a woman who supported her husband by working as a hostess and greeter at a restaurant for six nights a week for five years while he qualified to be a tax lawyer. All the while he was having an affair with her best friend, Alicia. Now he is making lots of money and wants a divorce, so he can marry Alicia. He sends his wife papers to sign, requesting a no contest divorce. She will get no compensation for all the time she supported him. 

The heroine of this story is a prostitute. She stopped working at the restaurant and moved to working as a prostitute because she needs enough money to pay a lawyer to help her contest the divorce. So this isn't a pretty story. It is about a woman fighting back to prove that she deserves some respect and she doesn't want to be used. 

This story was first published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Vol. 142 #6, December 2013. 

Martin Edwards wrote about Liza Cody's My People And Other Crime Stories at his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name? It is a great article.

Short Story Wednesday — Silver Bullets: The 25th Anniversary of Crippen & Landru Publishers

 

From the back of my edition of Silver Bullets, published by Crippen & Landru in 2019:

Twenty-five years of the best mystery short fiction from Crippen & Landru.

In 1994, publisher Douglas Greene opened the doors of Crippen & Landru Publishers with the release of a John Dickson Carr radio play, Speak of the Devil. In the subsequent two-and-one-half decades, Crippen & Landru has produced more than 100 single-author mystery short story collections by some of the most recognized current practitioners as well as some of the most beloved writers in the history of the mystery genre.

This book opens with an Introduction by Douglas Greene, which describes how he started his publishing house, Crippen & Landru. Fourteen short stories follow, plus an Afterword by Jeffrey Marks, who assumed the role of Publisher in 2018.

Each story has a brief introduction; some of those include the author's personal experiences with Douglas Greene and Crippen & Landru.

The authors who have stories in this book are: Kathy Lynn Emerson, Liza Cody, Brendan DuBois, Amy Myers, Jon Breen, Edward Hoch, Edward Marston, Terrence Faherty, Peter Lovesey, Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller, HRF Keating, Carolyn Wheat, Jeremiah Healy and Michael Z. Lewin.

I read the first three stories in the book and all three were good reads. I look forward to reading the rest of the stories. All of the stories are new to me as are some of the authors.

"Mistress Threadneedle's Quest" by Kathy Lynn Emerson

This is a story set in London, 1562. Mistress Threadneedle's neighbor has been killed by a lightning strike, while standing at his window during a storm. No one else questions whether this was natural death, but our narrator (Mistress Threadneedle) does. The outcome was a total surprise to me.

"Mr. Bo" by Liza Cody

This story is set at Christmas and I have a soft spot for Christmas stories. A mother and her nine year old son reunite with her sister several days before Christmas. The story is mostly sad but the ending is more upbeat. 

"A Battlefield Reunion" by Brendan DuBois

A private detective story set in Boston. This story was not what I expected based on the title, but the story I did get was very good. Another historical fiction story, this time set nine months after the end of World War II. Both the private detective and his clients are veterans and have bad memories of their experiences in the war. The client wants to find a newspaperman who was a war correspondent attached to his company during the fighting. The results of the investigation are unexpected.

Reading in November 2016

Another wonderful month of reading with a good bit of variety. Some relatively current crime fiction, a fantasy novel, a couple of mysteries set at Christmas, and some mysteries from earlier decades.

I started out the month with a book from the fantasy genre, one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books. I read Mort, the first book in the Death series. I am glad that I have finally started reading Pratchett's books.

I also read a very short graphic novel, RED. This graphic novel by Warren Ellis was the basis for the movie of the same title, released in 2010, starring Bruce Willis, Mary Louise Parker, and a lot of other entertaining and talented actors. When I say it was short, it was only three issues when first published, for a total of 66 pages. The book also includes character design sketches and the script and layouts for issue 1. I found these very interesting since I don't know the processes for developing a comic.



These are the crime fiction books I read in November...

A Question of Proof by Nicholas Blake
(Originally published in 1935, this book is set in a boarding school. This was the first book in the Nigel Strangeways mysteries by Nicholas Blake. Nicholas Blake was the pseudonym of Cecil Day Lewis, a poet laureate in the UK in the late 1960's into the early 1970's.)

Thou Shell of Death by Nicholas Blake
(This was the second book in the Nigel Strangeways mystery series. It is set at Christmas, and is a traditional English country house mystery.)

The Dreadful Lemon Sky by John D. MacDonald (reviewed here)

Past Tense by Margot Kinberg (reviewed here)

Dupe by Liza Cody (reviewed here)

Telling Tales by Ann Cleeves
(This is the second book in Ann Cleeves’ Vera Stanhope series, which is also now a TV series. A woman was put in prison ten years before for killing a teenage girl, the daughter of her ex-lover. Now it has been discovered that the woman was innocent, and Vera is looking into the original investigation.)

Murder Goes Mumming by Alisa Craig
(Another book set at Christmas. This one is a cozy, a humorous tale set in New Brunswick, Canada. Alisa Craig is the pseudonym of Charlotte MacLeod, used for two series set in Canada . Review coming soon.)

Dupe: Liza Cody

This is the first book in the Anna Lee Mystery series by Liza Cody, published in 1980. It won the CWA's John Creasey award for best first novel and was an Edgar nominee for Best Novel. There are five more books in this series; Cody's next crime fiction series was about a female wrestler, Eva Wylie.

Description at goodreads...

Anna quit the London police force because it was a dead end for women, but her job with Brierly Security isn’t a whole lot livelier. Her boss doesn’t much approve of female investigators, and her assignments tend toward the frustratingly genteel. The Jackson case doesn’t look like a big improvement. Ambitious, unpleasant young Deirdre Jackson has died, the apparent victim of a car accident on a lonely stretch of highway, and her parents want to know what their black-sheep daughter was up to in her last few months. Anna’s job, she knows, is to ask a few questions, write a report, and collect the Jacksons’ check. But the more questions she asks about Dee’s life, the more questions arise about her death.

Unlike other female private investigators who were introduced in the early 1980's (by Sue Grafton, Marcia Muller, and Sara Paretsky), Anna Lee works for a security company and is not her own boss. She is the only female investigator in the office, and doesn't get the best assignments.

Some modern readers complain that the story is dated. That is what I like about reading a story written at this time, so no complaints from me in that area. The story centers around a group that produces black market films and Anna works undercover briefly as a projectionist, which I found interesting. Also, I worked in those times, and I know how women were treated in the workplace (not in all circumstances of course).

This is not an action-packed story although Anna was beaten up and loses a few teeth because she won't give up looking into the case. That is one of her best characteristics... she is obstinate in pursuing a case, although realistic. If her boss won't keep the case open, she knows she cannot continue on her own.

I enjoyed this book, and have ordered the 2nd one in the series. Long out of print, affordable copies are now available at Amazon.com.

The female authors I mentioned above have had very nice things to say about Liza Cody. In a list at Pan Macmillan, Sue Grafton names Anna Lee as one of her top five fictional detectives (the other four are men). In a Guardian article, Sara Paretsky names Liza Cody as her favorite living author in her field. Marcia Muller wrote a very complimentary review of Dupe in 1001 Midnights, edited by Muller and Bill Pronzini.

In Martin Edward's review of Dupe:

This was one of those books I read in the eighties, and from which I sought a bit of inspiration, when I was thinking about what it took to write a fresh new mystery series. I liked Cody’s crisp, economical style of writing, the plausible way in which Anna and her colleagues were depicted, and the evocative way in which she depicted Anna Lee’s London.

I like how Liza Cody explains the process of writing this novel (at her website)...

At the very beginning all I wanted to do was to avoid my freezing, uninsulated studio, and look busy by the fire. 

I hadn't read a lot of detective fiction - just Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett and Ross McDonald - but I'd enjoyed the pace and the writing. I did, however, have very serious doubts about their views of women. On top of that part of the attraction was the US itself, which seemed like an exotic location where gunplay and casual violence were plausible; not at all like England which breeds a different kind of nastiness altogether. 

It made me wonder what would happen to an ordinary, competent English woman who happened to be a detective; someone who went unarmed, used the Yellow Pages a lot and got hurt when she was hit.

So I started small: I fitted an ex-police woman, Anna Lee, into a small detective agency on Kensington High Street and gave her an unimportant case. Then, sort of like a reader, I waited to see what happened. 

I'm a feminist and I tend to believe that ordinary, competent women can change the world if they want to. But back in the late '70s, early '80s it was as if they had to wait for male permission. 

Anna was a woman who was somewhat damaged by living and working in a man's world; she probably wouldn't have called herself a feminist - she would've just worked twice as hard and tried to be twice as good as the guys in order to be thought of as not quite equal.  

So the book, Dupe, as it developed, was never intended as a polemic. But it was intended to be a feminist story: to show the slights, insults and restrictions that ordinary, competent, intelligent women faced every day, especially those who worked in what at the time was seen as a man's world - a detective agency.

 -----------------------------

Publisher:   Bantam Crime Line, 1992 (orig. publ. 1980)
Length:       235 pages
Format:      Paperback
Series:       Anna Lee, #1
Setting:      London
Genre:       Mystery
Source:      I purchased this book, in November 2005.