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"The Favor"
My first effort at writing crime fiction, published by a now-defunct
magazine. (I am
positive there's no connection between those two happenstances, ahem.)
This story is based on
a true incident in which two men, virtual strangers to each other, cooperate
in a mutual-rescue mission that spans forty years.
Publication:
This is a low-key story set in the very near future that shows the insidious
effect of evil upon normally decent people. The three major characters are
in the food-and-wine business, but everyone in the story is a slave to one
kind of appetite or another.
This story appeared in the very first Cat Crimes anthology,
before anyone knew the book was going to turn into a successful series. It's
also the only story on which I've worked with a collaborator.
Gene DeWeese wrote the original story, trying to squeeze it into just
3000 words (impossible task) for some mag that really liked its short
stories short. When Gene heard about Cat Crimes, he sent
me three drafts he'd done of the story and said "See if you can do anything
with this!" (I think he was sick of working on it.)
Since I was
not under the same length restraints, I was able to add scenes
and give the story the pacing it didn't have
room for in its abbreviated version. Gene and I did some backing-and-forthing;
and when we were both satisfied, "Archimedes" finally saw print.
Publication:
The story appears in the same anthology as "Archimedes", and it's one of
the few things I've written that I'm satisfied with.
The cat in this story is a highly exaggerated version of one of my own
cats -- a neurotic, chewed-upon, abandoned little animal named Daniel who
was half-starved when he invited himself in to stay. Daniel took a full
year to come to trust me. But he stayed with me for seventeen years, until
he died of old age.
Publication:
This is the only
short story in which series character Marian Larch
appears (so far). I was working on You Have the Right To Remain
Silent when Marilyn Wallace asked for an original story for her
next Sisters in Crime anthology. So I took the same setting
and some of the same characters I was using in the novel and gave them an
additional case to work on.
The story is about desperate people doing the best they can in intolerable
situations. Unfortunately, one such person decides murder is the only
possible way out. Marian Larch is torn in this one; her sympathies, for
once, are with the guilty person instead of the victim.
Publication:
"Jack Be Quick"
This longish story was written for an anthology of fictional solutions to
real crimes; the writers were each asked to pick an unsolved mystery from
the past and invent a solution. I chose Jack the Ripper.
My angle on this was something that struck me as significant
about the Ripper's victims.
They'd all started out as respectable wives and mothers (the youngest
victim, though childless, was pregnant). And they'd all been either
abandoned or kicked out by their husbands. Deprived of the only role
they knew how to play, they all had to turn to prostitution in order to
survive. Every one of them had the same life story. I do not think this
was coincidence. The Ripper did not kill at random; he selected his
victims.
My "solution" is totally imaginary; I have no idea who Jack the Ripper
was. None of the usual suggested suspects seem valid candidates as far
as I can see.
Publication:
"A beautiful 22-year old is found dead in her apartment," Ed Gorman told me. "That
scene must appear somewhere in the story." As to the rest of the story --
the sky was the limit.
I wrote about an investigative reporter in the future, at a time when life
has become dangerous for journalists. So instead of investigating in
person, she uses simulacra -- remote-controlled robots indistinguishable
from humans without special scanning equipment. The reporter owns two such
simulacra; one is a beautiful 22-year-old female named Chickie, and the
other is a vigorous young male named Jocko.
But then Chickie is found dead in her apartment, and Jocko is arrested for
her murder...so the reporter must emerge from her cocoon to finger the
real killer herself.
Publication:
Imagine a large family clan in which everybody is accident-prone...and I
do mean everybody, from children to great-grandparents. A ready-made
cover-up for murder, wouldn't you say?
The story is told from the point of view of a young man who meets his
fiancée's family for the first time. Among all the crutches and neck braces
and wrist splints, there is one lethal accident that he suspects may have
been staged. But how to prove it to this careless bunch that looks upon
the Emergency Room as a second home and has a standing account with a
local undertaker?
Publication:
"Close, But No Cigar"
A Cat Crimes story. This one is set in Ford's Theatre in
Washington, D.C., where a cat makes the same leap from Lincoln's box to
the stage floor that John Wilkes Booth made...but who, catlike, trots
away unharmed.
It's a human being who gets "harmed"; a member of a cast rehearsing a play
is murdered. The director decides to play detective...but really isn't
very good at it.
Publication:  
"Ho Ho Ho"
An instructor in a Santa Claus school is strangled with a string of
twinkling Christmas tree lights. The killer has to be one of thirteen
jolly old elves, all wearing identical red suits and long white beards.
Ho ho ho.
I wrote this story for a Gorman and Greenberg anthology called Murder
for Mother, to be released in time for the next Mother's Day. May
I make it a science-fiction mystery? I asked. Sure, go ahead, I was told.
So that's what I did. The "mother" in my story is a mothership.
But then Ed Gorman called to say Marty Greenberg thought the story was too
skiffy for mystery readers and was looking for a place in an SF anthology
for it. Oh, no you don't! I cried. That story is not skiffy enough for
SF readers.
So at that point I thought the story was dead. But my agent said: Print
out another copy...I think I can sell it elsewhere. No you can't, sez I.
Let me try, sez he. So I did, and he did, and Janet Hutchings at
EQ had no problem with the SF elements at all. Don't you
love a happy ending?
Publication:
Another Cat Crimes story. This time the cat is a studio cat
who for the time being is living on a soundstage where a big F/X space
opera is being shot. One of the movie's leads is murdered, and it's the
cat who discovers the body.
The cat in this story is in fact one of my cats, Godfrey...the adventurous
one, the one who's into everything, the one who makes friends with everybody.
Even other animals like Godfrey. A real Hollywood personality.
Publication:
The anthology theme is food and cooking...and each contributing writer was
asked to provide a recipe related to the story. Well, I'd done
the Julia Child thing years ago; but recently I've been spending as little
time in the kitchen as possible. So I asked a GEnie buddy, Doug Brewer,
for a recipe; he gave me one for Soused Chicken (beer marinade).
I'd had it in my head to write a story about an honest man whose attempt
to do a decent thing involves him in a murder. So I made him an honest
man who likes to cook. In fact, it's his purchase of fresh herbs for the
Soused Chicken that gets him into the mess in the first place. The hero
finds himself caught up with four other people, all of whom want to solve
a murder before informing the police that one has taken place.
Publication: 
Last updated 7 August 2004. |
Looking -- We Found Him"
The word "scat" is used in every meaning I could find for it. The heroine
is a scat singer who lives with a cat that hates her but won't scat even
when she tells him to. The singer works in a dive where one of the other
acts is a comedian who tells scatological jokes. And in the audience is a
man who deals heroin (sometimes called "scat"). In the story,
someone is murdered under circumstances in which all the "scat"
elements come into play.
