Janet Hutchings

The anniversary 1000th issue of the magazine is the last one for the editor Janet Hutchings who is stepping down after 33 years (technically, this is a double issue so it carries both the number 1000 and 1001 and because of that double numbering, there are less than 1000 issues out there really but it carries the number anyway). It is also the January-February issue so it has the usual Sherlock Holmes related content. While there were no stories which really wowed me, there were none that I had to force myself to finish either and these days, I consider this a pretty good magazine issue.

The "Passport to Crime" section brings us to South Africa for The Wages of Sin by François Bloemhof, translated from the Afrikaans by Josh Pachter - a quiet story in which a man decides to get even with another one for stealing his girlfriend just to break her hard and ends up being accused of a much bigger crime than he planned to commit. The ending may appear open ended but it actually makes the story work even better.

The "Department of First Stories" introduces two new authors (being a double issue and all that): the only speculative story in the issue: Kanab Noon by Manon Wogahn and a very short piece by Rick Marcou called Baggage. The first story is slight on crime but makes up in atmosphere and can be read either as a speculative story (which I think was the intent) or as hallucination. The other story is too short and leads nowhere - despite a very good setup, it fizzles.

Peter Lovesey opens the regular stories section with a humorous tribute to the magazine and its outgoing editor in The Ellery Queen Job where two crooks decide to steal the full run of the magazine (which at the time had just closed its 500th issue). The story plays on the genre and its topics and despite being written specifically for this issue, it still works as a crime story (half-parody, half-serious at that).

The Swiss Army Knife by Joyce Carol Oates has a new widow deciding to go up a challenging trail while mourning. She is not planning to do anything stupid but she had not planned for a man who really likes meeting women alone on the trails. It is a quiet story (despite the violence) but it is a bit too understated - it is skimming the genre line - almost trying to stay outside of the genre (which a lot of main stream writers tend to do).

In So South It Was by Andrew Welsh-Huggins, a group of young drunk men decide to show the people in a tent camp that they are not welcome there. The evening ends in a tragedy - and some of the inhabitants find a way to pay them back.

No Title, No Clout by Marcelle Dubé is a debut for the author in this magazine although he comes in with another story of an already running series about retired Chief Superintendent Estelle Martin from the RCMP. This time she ends up finding a man who had been beaten and left in the snow. When she calls it in, she is briefly detained (because the police officer was too new to know her) and once that gets cleared, she ends up partnering with her usual reluctant partner to solve the case. Maybe one day these will be collected together - now they are all over the place in different markets.

Death of a Copperhead by R.T. Raichev is another series story, this time of a long running series of both novels and stories: Antonia Darcy and Major Hugh Payne from the [[[Country House Crime]]] series. The husband and wife are asked to go to an estate to proof that a woman had been faking her pregnancy. As it turns out, things are a lot more complicated than a fake pregnancy and before long, they end up with a dead body and more lies than one would expect. The ending is a bit convoluted without going into the improbable (but getting very close to it).

In Splash by Mat Coward, a man who had found a legal way to take away some very rich people's money ends up too clever for his own good. It all starts innocently enough but when he decides to help himself, things go really bad for him - until they do not. Despite the very high number of bodies (maybe the highest in the issue), it is a humorous and light story.

In Winter Visit by Joseph Goodrich, an old childhood friend of the narrator returns from the Navy just in time to find his step-father killed. Suspicion falls on him of course but the story is mostly about what led to the death than about its aftermath - the murder is used to tell the story of poverty and old friendship and that is its strength.

The Greek Interpreter is the yearly Holmes parody by Terence Faherty. While I do not mind these stories, I never found them very appealing. As the rest of them, it is good for a few laughs and for looking for where the story differs from the cannon (Mycroft!) but I'd rather have almost any other story than more of these...

In As You See the World by Paul Ryan O’Connor a woman gets her car stolen while her dog was in it and she keeps looking for that car, mourning for the dog. As it turns out, she is better than the police (not that they really looked).

Enjoy the Silence by Libby Cudmore plays on the cliches of the genre in a marvelous way. PI Martin Wade is sitting in his office when a damsel in distress walks in and asks him to find a friend she had not seen in awhile. The job is rapped in quickly but before Martin can turn around, the friend is found dead and things start looking uncomfortable for everyone involved. The skeleton of the story is certainly overused in the field but Cudmore manages to give it new clothes that make the story a lot more than it promises on the tin. It is probably the strongest story in the issue - and it is my favorite.

Swim at Your Own Risk by Nancy Novick is the kind of story I really am not very fond of - a man remembers a summer when he was a boy. Of course there is a crime in it and the writing was good but it really did not have anything new or unexpected to say (including the ending which was almost telegraphed through the story)

A reprinted story by Charlaine Harris (The One That Got Away) introduces us to Lily - a private detective with a painful past who is hired to tail a lawyer in Memphis. It looks like an easy job until the lawyer meets the man who is responsible for that painful past. The tailing job soon takes the back seat while Lily deals with the old tragedy. One of the stronger stories in the issue writing-wise.

In The Scarlatti Skip by Richard Helms, a detective is paid by a bondsman to make sure that a murderess does not leave town before her trial. This kind of story can go one of two ways usually - either the detective proves the killer to be innocent or the killer decides to run. It turned out to be the second type of story... with a twist. The ending made me laugh in a good way) which one does not expect from that kind of story.

In the Black Mask department, an old ex-boxer ends up using his old skills again in Going the Distance by David Bart. After being robbed by people he trusted, Hank is left with just a backpack of all his belongings and nowhere to be. Until he witnesses a kidnapping and decides that he may not be good for much but he will not leave a child with the idiots who grabbed her. The ending made me smile - it may have been a bit too sugary for my taste in any other story but here it somehow worked - coincidences and all.

The two poems ("To Sail or Not to Sail on a Frigid Morning" by Tom Tolnay and
"The Lost Poem" by Carl Robinette) did not really work for me, the reviews section ("The Jury Box") by Steve Steinbock deals with Sherlockiana (as is usual for this issue), Kristopher Zgorski takes a look at mystery podcasts for the Blog Bytes installment and Dean Jobb's true crime article "Arthur Conan Doyle and the Debatable Case" deals with Doyle's writings about a true crime (neither the Doyle article, nor this one actually getting anywhere).

The issue closes with a special feature: a letter from the editor in which she says goodbye to her readers.

And with that an era closes. The 1001 issues took 84 years and during that run, the magazine had had only 3 editors - Frederic Dannay from the first issue in 1941 till his death in 1982, Eleanor Sullivan (the managing editor for the last 12 years of Dannay's run; she was also the editor in chief for the sister magazine Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine from 1975 to 1981) from 1982 until her death in 1991 and then Hutchings (who is technically the first editor to step down on her own). The current managing editor is taking over for next issue and I do not expect a lot of differences but then you never know. And it will be curious to see who takes over permanently.… (more)

I seem to be on a kick of reading compilations of short stories lately. It's not too long ago that I was saying I didn't really enjoy short stories but the examples I've read lately may cause me to reexamine my position on that.

There were some really great stories in this collection. Most of them were by authors I have enjoyed in the past but some were by new (to me) authors. (Just what I need, more authors I have to follow!)

One of the authors I discovered was Carolyn Hart who wrote the story "Spooked" about a young girl living in Oklahoma during World War II. Apparently Hart has a series featuring an older heroine which she describes as her "tribute to women who were young during WWII...a generation of women who blazed independent paths in a male-dominated society." That sounds like something I will have to check out.

One of the stories was by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, a name that was familiar to me but not in the mystery genre. She has written a lot of great science fiction but if the story "Details" is anything to go by she is equally adept at mystery. Interestingly it is also set in the 1940's and features a soldier just returned from the war to his home in McCardle, Nevada. He talks briefly to a woman at a garage and the next morning she is found dead in the desert. The story explores racism because the woman was black and he was white. Very compelling.

The final story in the book "Of Course You Know that Chocolate is a Vegetable" by Barbara D'Amato would have caught my attention anyway but it's got quite a lot of scientific information woven into it and I enjoyed that. I'll be looking for more books by that author as well, especially since the introduction says "In virtually all of the Cat Marsala adventures, social issues come into the case. But if the author wants her readers to consider the serious issues she puts forward, she doesn't do it in a heavy-handed way. On the contrary, her books are marked, always, by a touch of humor."

Hope the next reader enjoys this book as much as I did. I'm glad I rescued it from the book sale.… (more)