De Novo Review

Title: "Hal Checks Out"
Author Kevin Wignall

Reviewed by: Rob Lopresti

Published in: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine March/April 2006

Plot: Superior
Characterization: Excellent
Style: Superior
Rating: Superior

Comments:

You know the plot (or at least the set-up) for the movie DIE HARD, right? A gang of terrorists take over a skyscraper and the hostages' only chance to survive is a noble, self-sacrificing cop who happens to be in the building. Now replace the cop with someone more like Richard Stark's character Parker, a violent, amoral crook who will calmly kill anyone - terrorist, hostage, rescuer - who gets in his way. And now imagine the story is a COMEDY. That's "Hal Checks Out." Hal is a very bad guy who happens to be the only chance for a bunch of people trapped in a hotel full of terrorists. The story starts out darkly funny and gets better as he collects a motley assortment of tagalongs, including a hip-hop star (at one point the action pauses as everyone but Hal argues about the virtues of Eminem vs the Beastie Boys), and a wimpy US senator. When the senator says that the west has only "greed, a craven materialism, an empty lust for pleasure and sensation," Hal retorts "You talk like those are bad things." A real romp.

Title: "The Tell-Tale Heart"
Author: E.A. Poe
 

Reviewed by: Steven Torres

Published in: Various

Plot: Excellent
Characterization: Excellent
Style: Excellent
Rating: Excellent

Comments:

This is a well known story and I love teaching it in Intro. to Lit. classes. The plot is essentially a confession by a person who claims not to be insane but who had his reasons for committing murder an old man he says he loved. I won't go into those reasons in case someone is coming to the story new, but we have, of course, a very unreliable narrator sin ce he starts off concerned that we might think he's insane. The questions I have my students ponder are as follows - the character goes through seven nights of dry runs at the murder. In most courtrooms in the USA I think that would be considered clear evidence of premeditation and would pretty much rule out an insanity defense, but can an insane person premeditate? Also, there is an attempt to cover up tracks afterward, another no-no if you're claiming insanity. But the attempt doesn't quite qork out. Does that muddy the waters? There again, with all the premeditation, the killer doesn't bring a weapon to the murder he's been plotting. Is he insane? Seven nights in a row he uses a squeaky lantern. Why not oil it? In the end, if we believe that the narrator is, indeed, insane, then can we be sure that a crime was committed at all? After all, we only have his word for it.

Title: "Come Back, Come Back"
Author: Donald E. Westlake

Published in: Levine

Reviewed by: Rob Lopresti

Comments:

This was my first encounter with Westlake (in one of those wonderful Hitchcock paperbacks), long before I discovered his funny stuff. He wrote a brief series of stories about Abe Levine, a NYC detective, who brings a very personal point of view to his cases. In this story, a successful businessman is threatening to jump off a ledge. This is a healthy, successful man who apparently wants to die, while the cop who has to talk him down - Levine - desperately wants to live, but knows his own weak heart may be failing. The suspense is wonderful. The surprise ending - and the last sentence I have never forgotten - are classic.

Title: "The Milk-Bottles"
Author: Dorothy L. Sayers

Published in: In the Teeth of the Evidence and Other Stories (Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1940)

Reviewed by: James Lincoln Warren

Plot: Superior
Characterization: Superior
Style: Superior
Rating: Superior

Comments:

Humorous mysteries are relatively rare, and all the more precious for it. The best ones use the same grist for the mill as all good crime fiction: suspicious circumstances, human fallibility, evocative details, and artful misdirection. This one is a perfect gem by a great mystery writer at the top of her form.

Title: "Privilege"
Author: Frederick Forsythe

Published in: No Comebacks (Viking, 1983)

Reviewed by: Rob Lopresti

Plot: Superior
Characterization: Good
Style: Good
Rating: Excellent

Comments:

My favorite courtroom story, a wonderful David-and-Goliath tale. A crooked business collapses and almost takes Bill Chadwick's small company with it. He survives because his customers trust him. Then a major newspaper summarizes the case - and lists him as one of the villains instead of a victim. With his business collapsing Chadwick has no obvious recourse except a lib el suit he can't afford against a major corporation that has lawyers by the mile. But a careful study of the law shows him a loophole that leads to a triumphant courtroom climax. The story was also made into a short film starring Milo O'Shea.

Title: "Call Of Duty"
Author: Larry Sweazy

Published in: Amazon Shorts

Reviewed by: Jaci Muzamel

Plot: Excellent
Characterization: Good
Style: Excellent
Rating: Excellent

Comments:

You will be instantly transported to another world when you read Larry Sweazy's "Call of Duty" . . . a world of good guys and bad. There's a definite feel of the hard boiled here and I half expected to see Philip Marlowe walk into the dialogue. Our hero is a guy with many flaws but an inner strength  that will get him through in a bind. You'd definitely want him on your side! I thought I had it figured, out but Larry throws a real twist in at the end. Don't even try, you won't guess. Larry's stories have a lot of punch to them and they always leave you wanting more.

Title: "See Also Murder"
Author: Larry Sweazy

Published in: Amazon Shorts

Reviewed by: Jaci Muzamel

Plot: Excellent
Characterization: Superior
Style: Superior
Rating: Superior

Comments:

"See Also Murder" is a great story. Larry gives the reader a real sense of the vastness of the plains, the bond of a small town and its people, and the desperation both can evoke in a person. You will love Marjorie, his pie-baking heroine with a story of her own, and you will definitely want more of her . . . not JUST her cherry pie! Larry has woven several stories into one and done a very nice job bringing them to a conclusion. You might long for a different ending but you will be satisfied. Some things can never be put right. I certainly hope we will see more of Marjorie, and her pies, in the future.

Title: "Dance Me Outside"
Author: W.P. Kinsella

Published in: Dance Me Outside: More Tales from the Ermineskin Reserve by W.P. Kinsella, David R. Godine Publishers (1986)

Reviewed by: Rob Lopresti

Plot: Superior
Characterization: Excellent
Style: Superior
Rating: Superior

Comments:

Canadian author Kinsella is best known for the novel Shoeless Joe which became the movie "Field of Dreams", but he has written dozens of short stories, many of them about a first nations reserve (Indian reservation to us Americans) in Alberta. The title story of his first collection is a terrific crime story. A young white man kills a young Indian woman and gets off with a slap on the wrist. When he is released after a few months in jail the men of the reserve plot a bloody vengeance, but when revenge comes it takes a form more satisfactory and surprising.

Title: "The Dublin Mystery"
Author: Baroness Orczy

Reviewed by: Tom Walsh

Plot: Superior
Characterization: Average
Style: Good
Rating: Excellent

Comments:

At the turn of the 20th century, before The Scarlet Pimpernel brought her international fame, the Baroness Orczy began to pen thirty-seven short stories featuring a nameless "old man in the corner" of a London tea shop. He was the ultimate Armchair Detective who solved crimes based solely on newspaper accounts. The Old Man smugly shared his solutions with lady journalist Polly Burton who strove, unsuccessfully, to take him down a peg. "The Dublin Mystery" is an "Old Man" story about two brothers, two wills, and two crimes. The good news: it's a gem of clever plotting. The bad news (for many modern readers): it makes no attempt to introduce the reader to interesting people or places. As a result, the story is about as emotionally engaging as a convoluted algebra problem -- and as intellectually stimulating. I loved it!

Title: "The End of the Train"
Author: Mike Wiecek

Published by: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 2007

Reviewed by: Leigh

Plot: Superior
Characterization: Excellent
Style Below: Excellent
Rating: Excellent

Several years ago, I read a mystery about the disappearance of a train. Frankly, I didn't buy the contrivance, but in this short story, the plot is believable and seemingly possible to pull off. I found myself envious of the writer's knowledge of train yards, the rendering of the setting almost a character unto itself. Unlike stories we've all read where computers or spaceships or government offices are poorly-researched devices, Wiecek convinced me he knew what he was talking about. As sometimes happens with a good story, I found myself at the end wishing for just a little more… just a little more…

Title: "To Honor Ichiko and Defend Japan"
Author: Alan Gratz

Published in: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 2007

Reviewed by: Leigh

Comments:

This is a story set in a chilling Japanese boys school, apparently a Lord of the Flies setting meant to toughen boys. It's a true mystery, the clues not at all difficult, and we follow the characters to see how the drama and betrayal plays out. Against such a brutal backdrop, the real crime is the abdication of adult responsibility that allowed the crime to occur in the first place.

Title: "The Gold-Bug"
Author: Edgar Allan Poe

Published in: various

Reviewed by: James Lincoln Warren

Rating: Superior
Plot: Superior
Characterization: Excellent
Style:  Excellent

Comments:

Contemporary readers may be distressed by the way Poe depicted the dialect and obsequiousness of the slave Jupiter, but should remember that Poe died a decade and a half before the advent of the Civil War, and that slavery and its attendant attitudes were facts of life for a Southern writer. For this reason, I have downchecked both "Characterization" and "Style", although the remainder of the writing is typical of Poe's much admired fluid, florid, and evocative prose.