THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVORITE THINGS

by Rob Lopresti

I am not judging any contests this year so I can share my opinions with you sans abash. These are my favorite mystery short stories of 2009. I don’t claim they are the best, because I only read two magazines and one book. There are fourteen stories, but that wasn’t a planned number; it was just how many reached my top tier.

Here are some statistics for the sports fans in the crowd. Six stories come from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Six appeared in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. The other two are in Seattle Noir. In terms of main characters I would loosely list them this way:

Amateur detective 3
Criminal 3
Multiple 1
Police 3
Private eye 3
Victim 1

But that’s misleading, because the majority of these stories I would call non-traditional. Only two could be called “whodunits,” and even that is a stretch. Take what I am calling cop stories: one involves an army policeman, another a fantasy character, and the third a federal official. There are genuine police officers in several stories, but they aren’t the viewpoint characters.

Six of the stories are historical mysteries. Half of the stories have surprise endings. Oh, and four of the tales are comic. Here’s the rap sheet…

Alcalá, Kathleen, “Blue Sunday” — SEATTLE NOIR. This is a story full of ironies, which does not mean it’s funny. A Hispanic MP treats civilians pretty roughly in Iraq, but when he gets home he finds that to the Seattle police he is the dangerous foreigner. If I remember correctly Kathleen told me that Curt Colbert, editor of SEATTLE NOIR, gave her some suggestions for the ending. If so, he surely earned his fee, because the ending is great.

Allyn, Doug, “Famous Last Words” — EQMM NOV 2009 Allyn is one of the most popular authors with the readers of Ellery Queen, which may help explain why I generally prefer Hitchcock’s. See, he tends to write long, brooding stories and I generally favor light and fluffy crime. That being said, this tale is a treat. Earl Emerson once said that murder opens the trunk of people’s lives, and that’s exactly what happens in this tale of academia. A woman dies tragically and her boyfriend begins to discover unwanted secrets about her life, including a motive for murder.

Dean, David, “Erin’s Journal” — EQMM DEC 2009. I’m a Jersey boy, so I admit I’m prejudiced in favor of this story about the Shore. (California has a Coast, Washington has Beaches, New Jersey has a Shore.) A Catholic priest finds a diary written by a teenage girl washed up on the beach. As the text shows her heading deeper into trouble the priest and the reader feel a helpless dread. The surprise ending is nicely forecast.

Estleman, Loren D., “Rumble Strip” — AHMM NOV 2009. This is a story about a private eye, but not a (typical) private eye story. There is no client, no investigation. Instead P.I. Amos Walker happens to be the guy who stumbles into the middle of a robbery and has to figure out a way to get himself and other hostages out alive. Nicely done.

Howard, Clark, “White Wolves” — EQMM NOV 2009 Howard’s tale shows us two flawed outsiders: an Alaskan native poacher and the alcoholic hunter sent to catch him. It’s pretty clear that these mortal enemies have more in common than they share with their supposed allies. The wry, enigmatic, last line of dialog is unforgettable.

Lawton, R.T., “Boudin Noir” — AHMM DEC 2009. Lawton has three or four story series running, and they couldn’t be more different. My favorite ones are about the Armenian, an anonymous salesman wandering around the eastern edge of Russia in the 1800s, but this is the third story in a series about a boy pickpocket in Paris during the 1600s. He is in love with a beautiful thief and hates her lover, a disgraced knight. In this story the king of thieves sets him a dangerous assignment, and I finally realized that the hated chevalier is protecting the boy, and doing it so rudely that the child doesn’t have the chance to recognize (and reject) the help.

Levinson, Robert S., “Regarding Certain Occurences In A Cottage At The Garden Of Allah” — AHMM NOV 2009. That mouthful of a title describes a story about a fixer in 1930s Hollywood who makes problems go away for studios and their stars. In this case he manages to create a little more trouble than he solves, with the help of a real-life character whose contribution I enjoyed very much.

Muir, Brian, “Dummy” — EQMM MAY 2009. I’m a sucker for what I call the sui generis story, the piece that is so far out of the norm that it leaves you with your jaw hanging as you ask Can they DO that? I don’t think I’ve yet managed to write one, but three of them made this list (see Powell and Warren below). Muir’s story is a tale of a show business family gone wrong: a mother is confessing to killing her son’s girlfriend. Or maybe something even worse is going on…

Powell, James, “Clowntown Pajamas” — EQMM FEB 2009. Boy, I wish I could steal from Jim Powell. I lack the imagination. In his best stories he free-associates ideas like bullets flying from a machine gun. This is his second story about Inspector Bozo of the Clowntown police. The intrepid cop is trying to prevent an incident that could bring the clowns to war with a neighboring state — the custard pies could start flying any minute. What the Marx Brothers are doing in the story I’ll never know.

Rutter, Eric, “Runaway” — AHMM SEPT 2009. A chilling historical story of a young man who has unwillingly taken over the family plantation. Now the overseer is dead, a slave is missing, and the hero is trying to figure out what happened under his nose. What the story is really about is this: there is no way to own slaves and live a moral life.

Stodghill, Dick, “Deathtown” — AHMM NOV 2009. Dick went out in style with this elegant noir piece that reads like a rediscovered Paul Cain story. During the Depression a drifter wanders into a town and joins up with the bad guys. But the town is worse than he ever guessed…

Thornton, Brian, “Paper Son” — SEATTLE NOIR. The regional president off Mystery Writers of America wrote the best story in SEATTLE NOIR, in my opinion. I’m a sucker for historicals (as this list makes clear), and this piece shows us Chinatown in the 1800s. A new immigration inspector is on the job and the surprises for him — and the reader — keep coming, right down to the last sentence.

Warren, James Lincoln, “Shanghaied” — AHMM JAN/FEB 2009. Have you read Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped? Well, James has and in this nautical story he turns it inside out and backwards. Hilarious.

Zeltserman, Dave, “Julius Katz” — EQMM SEP/OCT 2009. I wrote about this story once before. In a Nero Wolfe pastiche Katz is a food-loving (but thin) private eye. The tale is narrated by his assistant, Archie, who happens to be a computer program. Clever and amusing.

So, that’s my list. What’s on yours?