Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine Vol. 137 no. 6

Anna Hoyt #3 (Disarming)

by Janet Hutchings (Editor), Clark Howard (Contributor), Eric Cline (Contributor)

With wind in its sails and a salty sea breeze, our June issue cruises in with a great crew of crime writers whose fictional sleuths are strong on teamwork. . . . Start with the "The Chatelaine Bag," a Carpenter-Quincannon case from MWA Grand Masters Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, in which the 1890s P.I.s must ferret out the thief who ruined San Francisco's society event of the season; then check out Clark Howard's "Crystal Death," in which two DEA agents race the clock to find a Chicago drug dealer and end a rash of fatal overdoses. And you won't want to miss Eric Cline's "Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs," a chilling take on Poe's "Hop-Frog," in our Department of First Stories, in which the relationship between the jester Hopp-Frosch and the lovely Tripetta takes center stage.

We've got tales of loners, too, and of partnerships broken. Boston innkeeper Anna Hoyt travels to England, equally wary of being double-crossed by her patron and the enemy he sends her to spy on, in Dana Cameron's "Disarming" (sequel to her Edgar-nominated historical "Femme Sole"); and an English retiree becomes suspicious of his neighbors in a quaint seaside town in Caroline Benton's "A Game of Patience." In Maynard Allington's psychological thriller "The Appointment," a psychiatrist struggles to help her patient, who suffers from PTSD and finds the lines of reality and hallucination have blurred; and in Randall Silvis's "Snap," a man finds his trust is misplaced when an old friend returns to town--with a new woman in tow.

Finally, for some classic Hollywood-style suspense, see Robert Levinson's "The Killing of Stacey Janes" and Luis Adrián Betancourt's "Indiscreet Window" (Passport to Crime): In the former, a precocious fan club president has an ulterior motive: getting her revenge on the actress who killed her mother; and in the latter, a tribute to Rear Window, a man develops a one-sided relationship with the woman in a neighboring window.

CONTENTS:
Fiction: CRYSTAL DEATH by Clark Howard
Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Steve Steinbock
Fiction: DISARMING by Dana Cameron
Fiction: THE APPOINTMENT by Maynard Allington
Fiction: THE CHATELAINE BAG by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini
Passport to Crime: INDISCREET WINDOW by Luis Adrian Betancourt
Fiction: THE KILLING OF STACEY JANES by Robert S. Levinson
Fiction: A GAME OF PATIENCE by Caroline Benton
Reviews: BLOG BYTES by Bill Crider
Fiction: SNAP by Randall Silvis
Department of First Stories: TWO DWARVES AND EIGHT CHAINED OURANG-OUTANGS by Eric Cline
Special Feature: EQMM WELCOMES A NEW BOOK REVIEWER

Genres: Mystery

First published June 1, 2011

About the author

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine editor 1991-present.

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

CONTENTS


◾Fiction:

▪️"Crystal Death" - Clark Howard
▪️"Disarming" - Dana Cameron
▪️"The Appointment" - Maynard Allington
▪️"The Chatelaine Bag" - Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini
▪️"Indiscreet Window" - Luis Adrián Betancourt [Passport to Crime]
▪️"The Killing of Stacey Janes" - Robert S. Levinson
▪️"A Game of Patience" - Caroline Benton
▪️"Snap" - Randall Silvis
▪️"Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs" - Eric Cline [Department of First Stories]


◾Reviews:

▪️"The Jury Box" - Steve Steinbock
▪️"Blog Bytes" - Bill Crider


◾Special Feature:

▪️"EQMM Welcomes a New Book Reviewer"


This is an above average issue of EQMM, with some truly fine stories.

Two of the stories, "Disarming" by Dana Cameron and "The Chatelaine Bag" by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, are parts of series. "Disarming" is the second story in Cameron's tales of Anna Hoyt, a tavern-keeper in Boston in the mid-1700's. The first story, "Femme Sole," was nominated for the Edgar, Anthony, Agatha, and Macavity Awards. Wikipedia has the following list of all the stories in this series as of the beginning of 2019:

“Femme Sole,” in Boston Noir (2009)
"Disarming" in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (2011)
"Ardent" in Cape Cod Noir (2011)
"Declaration," in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (2014)
"An Obliging Cousin," in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine (2016)

In "Disarming," Mistress Hoyt is blackmailed by a wealthy Massachusetts man into going to London and finding the weaknesses of his business rival. This is a very worthy follow-up to its much-honored predecessor.

I have not liked every story in the series about Sabina Carpenter and John Quincannon written by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini, but I think that "The Chatelaine Bag" is quite good. Carpenter and Quincannon are private detectives in San Francisco in the 1890's. They are hired to guard an art gallery show of handbags from times gone by, one of which is a jewel-covered bag once owned by Marie Antoinette. Things go awry, and their detective skills become necessary.

There is one more historical mystery in this issue, "Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs," the first published mystery story by Eric Cline. The introduction to the story says that it is "a thoughtful fleshing out of one of [Edgar Allan] Poe's most famous stories, complete with much of Poe's original dialogue." Poe's story is "Hop-Frog," which I had not read until after I read this story. Poe's tale is written in the third person; Cline's is narrated by the main character, whose name is given here as "Hopp-Frosch," which, says the narrator, is German for "Hopping Frog." Cline's variation on Poe's work is very clever and a fine story in its own right. A dwarf has been captured and sent to be court jester to a cruel medieval Teutonic king.

"The Appointment," in the story of that name by Maynard Allington, is between a veteran returned from Afghanistan and Death. I find the ending of the story somewhat contrived, but up until then this is a tense tale in which the psychiatrically troubled veteran faces more than one kind of phantom.

Luis Adrián Betancourt is a Cuban author whose story "Indiscreet Window" was translated into English by Donald A. Yates. In this brief tale, a man believes that he sees a murder committed in a building across the street from his home. He calls the police. They arrive and then leave, seemingly without taking any action. When he checks with the police, they inform him only that no such murder was committed.

Unless the reader assumes that the police are cruel idiots, there is no reason why they don't just tell the man what really occurred. This makes no sense, and consequently this is a most unsatisfactory little story.

In "A Game of Patience" by Caroline Benton, the main character is a retired banker who has moved to "an out-of-the-way fishing village" in a rural part of England. People buy houses there as second homes, where they stay for only a part of the year. The villagers can scarcely afford to continue living there themselves. But perhaps that can be changed.

Randall Silvis wrote one of my favorite crime stories, "The Indian" (EQMM, March/April 2012). "Snap" is a very different story, but the two share a terrible quality of unremitting bleakness. "Snap" is a more standard tale of love and betrayal, with some baseball added to the mix.

"The Killing of Stacey Janes" by Robert S. Levinson tells of a six year old girl who witnesses her mother's murder. She later recognizes the murderer and determines to seek revenge. But the murderer is just so nice...

Clark Howard was, among other things, one of the best authors who ever wrote short mystery fiction. In "Crystal Death," two Chicago Drug Enforcement Agency officers, one male and one female, are investigating a case in which a fourteen year old girl died after "long-term meth use." They are determined to put an end to the meth manufacturers and sellers from whom the girl got her supply. Their aims are almost noble; their methods are definitely not. This is a tough, well-written story, which seems to endorse vigilante "justice."

Bill Crider's "Blog Bytes" column recommends four mystery blogs, one maintained in part by well-known author Megan Abbott.

With this issue, Steve Steinbock took over as the principal book critic for EQMM, replacing the semi-retiring Jon L. Breen, who wrote the "Jury Box" book review column for thirty years. Steinbock praises his predecessors and explains the rating system he will use. Of the books that Steinbock reviews in this issue, only one gets more than three (out of a possible five) stars. The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant receives Steinbock's first four-star review.

Like the stories, some of the artwork in this issue is especially good. Interior art is by Mark Evans, Jason C. Eckhardt, and Allen Davis. There is a rather silly cartoon, on which I can not read the signature. The cover by Gail Cross is excellent. It shows an extremely attractive young couple, smiling on a sailboat. They obviously don't have a care in the wor...wait a minute, what's that shadow?

There is only one story in this issue that I think is poor. I would especially recommend the stories by Cline, Cameron, and Howard.

[Rachel Burke]

Eric Cline, Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs

Here's the thing. I truly loved this story until I read Hop-Frog by Edgar Allan Poe upon which it is based. I read them back to back. And by based I mean "a narrator shift and 4 small added scenes."

I'm honestly not even sure it rises to the description of fan fiction. And I enjoy reading narrator shifts! But this one was just too exactly on the nose.

I'm not rating the issue as I've only read one story and didn't care for it. I don't want to artificially drag the ratings down.

[Arlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite story from this issue was "Two Dwarves and Eight Chained Ourang-Outangs" by Eric Cline. The two dwarves were Gypsy slaves who had been sold to a Teutonic king.