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.