Murder Most Conventional

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Murder Most Conventional Page 1

by Verena Rose (ed)




  Contents

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  THE MALICE DOMESTIC ANTHOLOGY SERIES

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PREFACE, by Katherine Hall Page

  CONVENTIONAL WISDOM, by Marcia Talley

  DJINN AND TONIC, by Neil Plakcy

  THE VANISHING WIFE, by Victoria Thompson

  THE RIGHT TO BARE ARMS, by John Gregory Betancourt

  MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE, by Su Kopil

  ANONYMOUS, by Kate Flora

  AT GOES AROUND, by B.K. Stevens

  THE HAIR OF THE DOG, by Charles Todd

  THE BEST-LAID PLANS, by Barb Goffman

  A DARK AND STORMY LIGHT, by Gigi Pandian

  THE CLUE IN THE BLUE BOOTH, by Hank Phillippi Ryan

  WICKED WRITERS, by Frances McNamara

  COVERTURE, by KB Inglee

  DARK SECRETS, by Kathryn Leigh Scott

  TARNISHED HOPE , by KM Rockwood

  NOT FORGOTTEN, by L.C. Tyler

  BOSTON BOUILLABAISSE, by Nancy Brewka-Clark

  KILLING KIPPERS, by Eleanor Cawood Jones

  ELEMENTAL CHAOS, by M Evonne Dobson

  OUTSIDE THE BOX, by Ruth Moose

  THE PERFECT PITCH, by Marie Hannan-Mandel

  TWO BIRDS WITH ONE STONE, by Rhys Bowen

  A GATHERING OF GREAT DETECTIVES, by Shawn Reilly Simmons

  AFTERWORD, by Max M. Houck, Ph.D., FRSC

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

  Copyright © 2016 by Malice Domestic, Ltd.

  Original stories copyrighted by their individual authors.

  “Conventional Wisdom” original copyright © 2000 by Marcia Talley. Revision copyright © 2016.

  Reprinted by permission.

  *

  Published by Wildside Press LLC

  www.wildsidepress.com

  EDITORS

  Verena Rose, Barb Goffman, and Rita Owen

  THE MALICE DOMESTIC ANTHOLOGY SERIES

  Elizabeth Peters Presents Malice Domestic 1

  Mary Higgins Clark Presents Malice Domestic 2

  Nancy Pickard Presents Malice Domestic 3

  Carolyn G. Hart Presents Malice Domestic 4

  Phyllis A. Whitney Presents Malice Domestic 5

  Anne Perry Presents Malice Domestic 6

  Sharyn McCrumb Presents Malice Domestic 7

  Margaret Maron Presents Malice Domestic 8

  Joan Hess Presents Malice Domestic 9

  Nevada Barr Presents Malice Domestic 10

  Katherine Hall Page Presents Malice Domestic 11: Murder Most Conventional

  DEDICATION

  As one of the editors of Malice 11: Murder Most Conventional, I take great pleasure in dedicating the first Malice Domestic Anthology in fifteen years to the following:

  >To Martin Greenberg—the original Malice Domestic anthologies were his brainchild, and he was the editor of Malice Domestic 1 through 4.

  >To Beth Foxwell—who co-edited Malice 5 and 6 and edited Malice Domestic 7 through 10.

  >To the presenters—who were instrumental in making each of the original 10 anthologies a huge success. Over the course of 10 volumes, 29 stories were nominated for the Agatha award. Of those, four won the Agatha for Best Short Story.

  >To the Honorees of Malice Domestic 28 and invited contributors to this anthology—

  •Katherine Hall Page—Lifetime Achievement Honoree (Presenter)

  •Max M. Houck—(Contributor)

  •Hank Phillippi Ryan—Toastmaster (Contributor)

  •Victoria Thompson—Guest of Honor (Contributor)

  >To the selection committee –

  •Rhys Bowen—Agatha winner and former Honoree

  •Earlene Fowler—Agatha winner and former Honoree

  •Douglas Greene—former Poirot Honoree and Malice 28 Amelia Honoree

  >To the Malice Domestic Board of Directors—the greatest team I’ve ever played on.

  >And to my fellow editors, Barb Goffman and Rita Owen, without whose support and expertise the vision of reviving the Malice Anthologies could not have happened.

  Finally, we dedicate this anthology to all readers of traditional mysteries whose love of the genre inspired these stories.

  —Verena Rose

  April 2016

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  The editors would like to thank John Betancourt and Carla Coupe at Wildside Press for their constant and unwavering support to Malice Domestic and these editors. We also thank Judy Barrett of Judy Barrett Graphics, Alexandria, VA, and illustrator Deane Nettles for their delightful graphics.

  Nancy Gordon in New Jersey has been generous in her unfailing dedication to the excellence of proofreading of this anthology and Malice Domestic’s annual convention materials.

  Barb Goffman did the developmental and line editing of this anthology, and she’d like to note that she learned a number of things while working on the book, including how many types of conventions there are in the world, and that whisky without the e means Scotch in the U.K., which is why you’ll see the word spelled whisky in the stories set there. Barb has been proud to help the authors in this book make their stories shine.

  PREFACE, by Katherine Hall Page

  Just as there was a Christie for Christmas, there was a Malice Domestic Anthology of Traditional Mystery Stories for spring. From 1992 until 2001, the books with their distinctive covers— many of which featured teapots definitely not suitable for Earl Grey—arrived in time for the Malice Domestic convention. The editors of the award-winning collections comprise a star-studded crime writers’ Who’s Who: Martin Greenberg and Elizabeth Peters, Malice Domestic 1; Mary Higgins Clark, Malice Domestic 2; Nancy Pickard, Malice Domestic 3; Carolyn Hart, Malice Domestic 4; Phyllis Whitney, Malice Domestic 5; Martin Greenberg and Anne Perry, Malice Domestic 6; Sharyn McCrumb and Elizabeth Foxwell, Malice Domestic 7; Margaret Maron, Malice Domestic 8; Joan Hess, Malice Domestic 9; and Nevada Barr, Malice Domestic 10.

  The list of anthology contributors adds further luster to the pantheon, among them: Robert Barnard, Stephanie Barron, Simon Brett, Jan Burke, Dorothy Cannell, P.M. Carlson, Kate Charles, Jill Churchill, Camilla Crespi, Amanda Cross (Carolyn Heilbrun), Barbara D’Amato, Mary Daheim, Diane Mott Davidson, Carole Nelson Douglas, Charlotte & Aaron Elkins, Frances Fyfield, Jonathan Gash, Ed Gorman, Jan Grape, Sue Henry, Edward Hoch,

  H.R.F. Keating, M.D. Lake (Allen Simpson), Janet Laurence, Peter Lovesey, Edward Marston, Marlys Millhiser, Gwen Moffatt, Miriam Grace Monfredo, Walter Satterthwait, Marcia Talley, Charles Todd, Carolyn Wheat, and Susan Wittig & Bill Albert. The editors also contributed stories to various volumes.

  When word went round that there would no 2002 anthology, the mystery reading world wept—particularly readers of traditional mysteries, those books best represented by Agatha Christie and similar authors, celebrated by the Malice Domestic conventions.

  And then in 2014, word went round that there would be a Malice Domestic 11, the volume you now hold in hand. Eyes were dried and readied to revel in what is a most fitting, though tardy, continuation of the anthologies. Here it is, in time for 2016’s Malice Domestic 28 convention: Malice Domestic 11: Murder Most Conventional.

  A word about the Malice Domestic convention. In 1988 a small group—Terry Adams, Gerry Letteney, Barbara Mertz, and Mary Morman—got together to plan a convention that would honor traditional mysteries, hitherto ignored or worse at other conventions, especially when it came to awards. They env
isioned a gathering of like-minded folk interested in panels about Malice- type authors, both past and present. Rather than move the convention each year, they decided to root it in their own backyards, the D.C. region. They also wanted an inclusive gathering that welcomed writers, fans, editors, agents, and booksellers equally. No hierarchy. The only requirement for attendance was a love, dare one say passion, for the genre. Elizabeth Foxwell came on board to produce the program book and Dean James, the award process in which books are nominated and voted on by the convention’s attendees only.

  Selecting the name for the awards was easy—the Agathas were born. There were three types in 1989, that first year: Best Novel (now called Best Contemporary Novel), Best First Novel, and Best Short Story. Over time, the Agathas grew and there are now twice as many categories: the original ones, plus Best Historical Novel, Best Nonfiction, and Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel.

  The convention site has roamed the D.C. area and is now happily settled back in Bethesda, Maryland, the original location in many minds. Malice Domestic I in a Silver Spring, Maryland, venue was a test of loyalty! You may read all about it and much more in Not Everyone’s Cup of Tea: An Interesting and Entertaining History of Malice Domestic (2013), edited by Verena Rose and Rita Owen, editors with Barb Goffman of this anthology as well.

  The short story as such dates to the nineteenth century, but the form is as old as humankind—myths, sagas, tales told around a fire. “Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short,” Henry David Thoreau observed to a friend. Edgar Allan Poe, a master of the form, wrote, “A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build toward it.” Taken together, these are a fine summation of the challenge posed by short story writing: that paring-down process, the examination of each word essential for a satisfactory result. Rather than the longer pace of a novel, character is revealed through action and setting painted with scant brushstrokes.

  There is a particular pleasure in reading short stories, similar to relishing small plates—tapas—or ordering several appetizers rather than a main course. Mystery fiction has always attracted writers wishing to provide this sort of experience, brief but lingering long. One has only to think of one’s first Poe short story read—doubtless followed by a sleepless night. Or perhaps the first story to make an impact was an O. Henry with its surprise ending, or a Conan Doyle—“It was the band! The speckled band!” One may reread these for pleasure, but they are never forgotten.

  The roster of traditional mystery short story writers must include Agatha Christie perhaps first and foremost, but she is joined by others, as prolific and proficient: Dorothy Sayers with the Peter Wimsey collection; Baroness Orczy’s Old Man in the Corner;

  G. K. Chesterton’s incomparable Father Brown; Mary Roberts Rinehart’s Miss Pinkerton; Saki (H. H. Munro)—“The Open Window”!; Margery Allingham’s quintessential gentleman, Albert Campion; and earlier, Anna Katharine Green’s ground-breaking female detective, Violet Strange.

  Yet, a bonanza of stories awaits more immediately. Malice Domestic 11: Murder Most Conventional is anything but a conventional undertaking. Unlike the other Malice Domestic anthologies, the project was open to all published and unpublished writers who met the cut-off date and wrote stories that matched the criterion: the story had to take place at or have some relationship to a convention. The convention could be of any sort, not limited to a mystery or writers’ con. The selection committee read entries as blind submissions with the exception of Malice 28’s Guest of Honor, Victoria Thompson; Toastmaster, Hank Phillippi Ryan; former Malice honoree Rhys Bowen, and Wildside Press’s publisher, John Betancourt. The committee had a difficult, but delightful job narrowing their selections, and readers will appreciate their work in not only choosing the best, but selecting stories covering a broad range—first person, third person, historical, humorous, dark, and just plain outrageous. They all have a connection to a convention, yes, but the results suggest a title change: Murder Most Unconventional!

  Malice Domestic 11 contains four period pieces. “Coverture” by KB Inglee and “The Vanishing Wife” by Victoria Thompson invoke the early days of the women’s suffrage movement in New York. They illustrate how authors can use the same setting to produce works that are unique in plot, character, and tone. Both stories are all too timely.

  Agatha Christie wrote many short stories using her series sleuths, which add to our appreciation of their abilities—and personalities. Rhys Bowen and Charles Todd (Charles and Caroline Todd) have achieved the same thing here. In the Todds’ “The Hair of the Dog,” it’s 1920 and Inspector Ian Rutledge is in London’s Kensington, called out at dinner on a case. For fans, Hamish does make an “appearance”—and a member of the royal family is present, as well. Rhys Bowen’s “Two Birds With One Stone” finds her Spyness, Lady Georgiana Rannoch, at Castle Rannoch and contains one of the most memorable opening lines in the anthology: “I have a confession to make. I’m actually not too fond of bagpipes, especially when played outside my window at dawn.” The story contains a twist that’s a throw.

  Thirteen writers looked for inspiration from gatherings far afield from a mystery convention. Taking Strunk and White’s timeless advice to omit needless words, John Betancourt delivers a wallop of a short story set at a state fair. This is indeed an ending that lingers. . . .

  There’s a wonderfully dark coda in KM Rockwood’s “Tarnished Hope” with an ingenious use throughout of a narrator who appears at every convention of any nature, but is virtually invisible.

  Librarians get their day in Ruth Moose’s “Outside the Box” and it’s one of three with supernatural overtones—watch for Moose’s references to “lots of shiny silver pins.”

  Next, a magician pulls a rose petal, not a rabbit, from his hat, a bowler, at the start of “A Dark and Stormy Light” by Gigi Pandian. The sleight of hand continues. Be prepared. Time, place, and especially persons are not as they seem.

  Unarguably the winner for best title, “Djinn and Tonic” by Neil Plakcy, is a magic carpet ride—truly—from start to finish and will leave the reader longing for Yegor’s life-extending elixir. Plakcy’s sensual descriptions should come as scratch–and-sniffs—“Biff smelled her perfume, a mix of salt water, coconut, and custardy ylang-ylang.”

  Kathryn Scott’s haunted “Dark Secrets” lets us in on the ones behind a highly successful vampire soap opera whose child star is now grown up—long gone from Tinseltown. But the past is hard to escape and, with it, the darkest secret of all.

  You may want to skip “Killing Kippers” by Eleanor Cawood Jones if you have a fear of clowns and your worst nightmare is being snowbound at one of their conventions. But you would be missing a macabrely humorous tale with a line that says it all: “Stranger things have happened.”

  One of the most fascinating conventions conjured up is the one in Su Kopil’s “Message in a Bottle.” Who has not picked up a bottle on a beach hoping for a scrolled piece of paper still intact inside? A treasure map? A love letter? A fifth-grade science project? The MIB hunters are a small group, but determined to uncover buried secrets. This is one of the most comic stories here, with unforgettable characters galore.

  Think hard about taking a drink from a frenemy in “Anonymous.” Kate Flora skillfully details the ramping up of competition in the fashion world where appearance is everything: “The eyebrows tried to rise but the frozen forehead wouldn’t allow it.” Watch out for a martini with three olives.

  Jealousy also rears its ugly head at the booksellers’ convention in “Boston Bouillabaisse.” Nancy Brewka-Clark brings a deadly— and wickedly funny—perspective on the event.

  “Elemental Chaos” by M Evonne Dobson is a short story for our time, and will force readers to take a close look at the science fair projects of those near and dear—especially the neighbors’ kids. Think Star Trek and Star Wars meet The Big Bang Theory.

  Inventiveness is at t
he fore in Marie Hannan-Mandel’s “The Perfect Pitch,” and there is no question that the narrator’s product, the Lint-Locker, would make millions if only our protagonist could present it to the “megastar inventor” judge. This is another example of the blend of satire and good old whodunits represented in Murder Most Conventional.

  Seven writers chose to set their stories in a mystery writers’ convention with a plethora of fiendish results.

  No, you are not trapped in a diabolical funhouse chamber of mirrors. All the Nancy Drew lookalikes are real attendees at a Nancy Drew convention in Hank Phillippi Ryan’s “The Clue in the Blue Booth.” It all comes down to “What would Nancy do?”

  In B.K. Stevens’ clever “What Goes Around,” the amateur sleuths solving the crime perpetrated on one of them are mystery convention attendees. Who could be better equipped for this than devoted readers of traditional mystery fiction?

  In similar fashion, Frances McNamara’s “Wicked Writers” reminds us to never underestimate the power of women, especially well-read ones. Alfred Hitchcock would have loved this.

  For past Malice attendees, “The Best-Laid Plans” by Barb Goffman is déjà vu all over again with its subtle referencing of the con. Others will find it equally delightful and an incentive to sign up. And think Angela Lansbury in the role of mystery writer Eloise Nickel.

  “Not Forgotten” by L.C. Tyler is a devilishly conceived reminder of what goes around comes around, or as a mother would say, “It never hurts to be nice to someone. You don’t know when your paths might cross again.” It’s also a paean to midlist authors everywhere!

  Two stories in this category make perfect bookends for Malice Domestic 11: Murder Most Conventional. All the stories in the Malice Domestic 9 anthology were an homage to Agatha Christie and included her own previously unpublished story, “The Case of the Discontented Soldier.” Where better to start this volume than with “Conventional Wisdom” by Marcia Talley as she imagines what Tommy and Tuppence Beresford’s grandchildren, Caroline and Stephen, might be doing? The apple has indeed not fallen far from the family tree.

 

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