But the kid was stronger than Baker could have imagined. The swell looked uniform from up on the cliff, but the boy appeared to see something, whatever it was he'd been waiting for, the right wave, and suddenly he grabbed his friend more firmly around the body and with what looked like practised ease, the two of them rode it right back onto the rocks, travelling fast.
The rescuer hit the lower rocks fiercely but was moving immediately, scrambling away from the waterline, dragging the first boy, who'd washed up like a dead seabird. There was still no complacency about him as he cajoled his friend into movement, hauling him onto his feet, starting him up the path.
It took Baker a moment to realize that this had not ended as it should have done. Instead, the impossible had happened and both boys had somehow been delivered from the waves.
Some of the kids above cheered and whooped spontaneously. Some were crying. The male teacher ran down the path to help them and, after some awkward manoeuvring, picked up the first boy and carried him the rest of the way.
The second boy, whose name was Jake, walked slowly behind them, shivering, the first signs of exhaustion pulling at him. Even in that state, his brown hair plastered to his head and face, his clothes hanging cold against his frame, there was a startling air of peace about him. He didn't look like someone who'd just performed a miracle and saved a life in the process.
Baker stared at the boy, still in his island of calm amidst the maelstrom that had swept up the rest of them, and he felt himself lurch, as if something had been ripped open deep inside him, as if he might drop down dead right there on that promontory. That was exactly how it felt to Baker, as if he could feel the life draining out of himself.
What had wounded him to the core was a devastating realization. At first he'd thought it was a sense of loss, seeing that boy act the way he had, his selflessness, and realizing that he'd long shed the quality of behaving like that—of behaving in a way that was recklessly, beautifully human.
But it was worse than that. It was the realization that he had never been that boy. He wouldn't have dived in at fifteen and he wouldn't have dived in now, not because he was afraid but because within himself he possessed no reason to dive.
Baker didn't fear death and he'd thought that was enough, but it wasn't an absence of fear that had made that boy act the way he had, it was greater than that, it was a love of life, an urge to protect it against all the odds, heroism in its purest form. And Baker had never lost those attributes because he'd never had them.
He turned, trying to get himself away from the scene, but as he started walking back to the hotel he couldn't help but think of Dorothy Jennings. She'd saved six people in the Yemen once, at enormous risk to her own safety. If he'd told her this morning that her death would save one other person she'd have probably administered the overdose herself. That was the life he had ended today.
Hammond emerged from the building looking drained and pale. He smiled apologetically and Baker faltered and stopped walking for a moment. He'd despised Hammond until now, but he knew as soon as he looked at him exactly what Hammond would have done if he'd been out there just five minutes earlier. He probably didn't know it himself, but Hammond would have dived.
* * * *
Hammond was ready for the gloating, for the ridicule. He wasn't ready for the scene he met with as he stepped out of the hotel. It took him just a moment to realize some emergency had taken place. There were groups of kids huddled near the hotel, upset and shocked, more out on the promontory with the teachers, formed together in a larger huddle as if attending to someone who was hurt.
Most disturbing of all was Baker. He was walking directly towards him but he looked terrible, as if someone had turned off his power supply. It wasn't that he looked upset, more that he looked ... grief-stricken.
"What's happened?"
Baker appeared to regain some of his composure and said, “Nothing, a kid went in the water, but he's okay."
Hammond looked over Baker's shoulder and tried to see what was going on in the larger huddle. He knew instinctively that they'd be better placed to help with casualties than the teachers would.
"Shouldn't we help? He could go into shock."
"No, we can't be here—we have to get away as quickly as possible.” His eyes had been darting around, unstable, but he fixed Hammond now and said, “They've called the coast guard, and the kids are both okay. Trust me, they'll be fine without us."
It was so strange to hear Baker using reassuring language that Hammond started walking with him back to the car, glancing once more at the scene behind them as he said, “Both? I thought you said one kid went in the water?"
"One got swept in by a wave, another dived in to pull him out."
"That's amazing, at this time of year, as well."
Baker nodded and said, “It was amazing. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it.” As if remembering himself, he added, “Stupid, too. Any other time, they'd both be dead."
Hammond ignored the criticism and tried to think what he would have done in the same situation, whether now or as a kid of that age. He didn't think he'd have dived in after anyone, not at this time of year anyway, but he liked to think he would have done. At least, he was certain he couldn't have stood by and done nothing.
As they reached the car, Baker said, “Do you mind driving?"
He still didn't sound like himself, but Hammond said, “Of course not—it's the least I can do after messing up this morning."
They got in the car and drove away. Baker took some mints from his pocket and offered him one, which he accepted gratefully, anything to shake off the bilious aftertaste in his mouth.
"About this morning,” said Baker. “I'll tell them you came into the house, that it went off smoothly. If you want me to, that is."
Hammond couldn't believe what he was hearing, and turned briefly to check that Baker wasn't messing with him.
"Of course, yeah, if you don't mind."
"If I tell them what happened your career's finished, and that wouldn't be right. You've got a good career ahead of you, Hammond, but...” Baker hesitated, then said, “It isn't with this Branch. Do yourself a favour and ask for a transfer. You could do better than this."
He didn't see that he had a choice anyway, not in the long term, because there'd be another Dorothy Jennings sooner or later and he'd make the same decision every time.
"I will,” said Hammond. “And thanks."
He still wasn't convinced Baker was being straight with him, unless whatever he'd witnessed back there at the hotel had made him want to do a good deed for someone. Maybe he'd misread Baker, too, but something had certainly changed in him since finishing lunch.
With the thought of lunch, he said, “And I'm sorry I lost it this morning—I don't know what happened there."
Baker took a few seconds to respond, his voice subdued as he said finally, “It's easy for people like me to take it for granted, what we do, but there's no shame in you losing it. You witnessed a death today, and that's no small thing."
Hammond nodded. He was about to correct him, to tell him he hadn't actually witnessed the death firsthand, but he kept driving and remained silent, and Baker remained silent next to him. There had been a death—that was all that mattered. l (c)2008 by Kevin Wignall
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Our Size Change
EQMM is ending its 2008 publishing year with a slight change in size. It's natural for readers to want their favorite publications to stay exactly as they've always been, and with that in mind, we've tried hard over the years to be faithful to EQMM's original compact format, similar to a paperback book. We know that many of our readers want a magazine that can be shelved and saved, and that is as easily carried around to be read in transit as laid on a bedside table. We believe the issue you hold in your hands meets those requirements. With its increase of only five-sixteenths of an inch in height, it should fit most bookshelves that house older issues; and it's still small enough overall to go convenien
tly into a handbag.
We expect the five-eighths of an inch we've added to the magazine's width to enhance our dramatic and colorful classic pulp-art covers. Inside, the extra space and more open pages are designed for greater ease in reading. Another advantage to readers is that we're going to be taking the opportunity of our size change to shift certain print features to our Web site, www.themysteryplace .com. For example, the yearly index, which has appeared in the last issue of the year since 1946, will now be found on our Web site instead, and will be expanded, eventually, to accommodate searches by author from a database going all the way back to the magazine's inception. Currently a work in progress, this, like other coming EQMM Web features, is intended to extend a service to readers while reserving as many print pages as possible for fiction.
As always, we welcome your comments. If you shop for EQMM at retail stores, we'll be especially glad to know if you can spot us better now in the crowded racks!
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Reviews: THE JURY BOX by Jon L. Breen
While the current crime-fiction scene may have no one quite as prolific as Edgar Wallace, Georges Simenon, or the multi-bylined John Creasey, a few writers qualify as marvels of productivity. Max Allan Collins has been re-viewed in this space by the present juror more than any other writer, partly because he turns out so many books but mainly because of their consistently high quality. His second under the pseudonym Patrick Culhane ranks with his best.
**** Patrick Culhane: Red Sky in Morning, Morrow, $24.95. In 1944, ensign Peter Maxwell, though happily married with a comfortable gig as a Navy choir director, joins three friends in volunteering for duty on a new munitions-carrying ship. The officers, including a bigoted but prag-matic captain, are white; the crew, apart from four non-coms, are black. Thanks to his friendship with fellow musician and unofficial crew leader Sarge Washington, in civilian life a homicide detective in Chicago's Bronzeville, Pete is able to keep relations peaceful, even after the Port Chicago disaster, in which many black seamen died. While an on-ship murder investigation in the second half provides a fine whodunit, the novel is even more notable as an account of men at war, in the tradition of Herman Wouk's The Caine Mutiny,and as a realistic depiction of the attitudes of its time, including (the reader is warned) “unpleasant language in matters of race and sexual orientation.” The book is dedicated to the author's late father and based in part on his World War II experiences.
*** Max Allan Collins: The First Quarry, Hard Case, $6.99. My January 1978 review of Collins's The Slasher, about a darkly humorous killer for hire named Quarry, concluded with atypical prescience that the author seemed “a good bet for future glory.” The latest Quarry is a prequel to the rest of the series. In 1970, the former Vietnam sniper, a newly recruited hitman anxious to avoid collateral damage, is sent to Iowa City to eliminate a womanizing novelist and creative-writing professor. Complications ensue and carnage rises in a typically expert piece of fast-paced storytelling.
*** Ken Bruen: Once Were Cops, St. Martin's Minotaur, $22.95. With three new books in the reviewing pile, Bruen is another favorite writer tough to keep up with. Galway cop Michael O'Shea, a psychopathic killer reminiscent of a Jim Thompson character, pulls strings to enter an exchange program with the NYPD, welcoming the chance to carry a gun and exercise his murderous impulses in other creative ways. Though I don't see how the blank pages and spaces between lines serve any other purpose than to make a very short novel look longer, there's no denying this is a gripping, neatly plotted specimen of fiction noir, finishing with a shock ending that leaves the reader to connect the dots. Bruen holds his incongruous highbrow literary asides mostly at bay, but he can't resist having his cops throw in references to James Joyce and Emily Dickinson.
*** Ken Bruen: Cross, St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.95. A much more decent albeit depressed and alcoholic Galway sleuth, former Guard turned private eye Jack Taylor, interrupts his brooding to investigate a young man's crucifixion murder at the request of a lesbian cop almost as surly as he is. That a reader would be willing to spend page after page in the company of a character as miserable and un-pleasant as Taylor is a tribute to the wonders of Bruen's flavorful Irish prose, vivid sense of place, and very dark humor. (A writer can be no-end self-indulgent if enough readers are cheering from the sidelines, but there are limits. Bruen's The Max [Hard Case, $6.99], written with Jason Starr, lost me early in the going with its incessant plugging of other writers.)
*** Chet Cunningham: The Mystery of Hamlin Springs, Five Star, $25.95. Young Cal Winters comes to the Tennessee village of the title to find out who murdered two of his relatives eighty years before, and it becomes clear that anyone with his surname is regarded with fear and suspicion by certain members of the arts and crafts community, including a clock maker, wood sculptor, chair maker, and potter. The characters are involving and several interlocking mysteries are satisfactorily solved in an agreeable entertainment by the author of over three hundred books in various genres. Weakest element is the bland title.
*** Domenic Stansberry: The Ancient Rain, St. Martin's Minotaur, $24.95. San Francisco private eye Dante Mancuso looks into the case of Bill Owens, a Symbionese Liberation Army member turned solid citizen who is arrested in front of his children when a decades-old accusation of murder in the course of a bank robbery is re-opened by federal investigators in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The Italian-American North Beach area and the highly charged Bay Area political scene are brought to life in a thoughtful, well-written, surprising novel.
*** Aaron Elkins: Uneasy Relations, Berkley, $23.95. Forensic scientist Gideon Oliver and wife Julie travel to Gibraltar, where the skeletons of a woman and child have suggested a link between Homo sapiens and Neanderthals. Conflict and murder among the gathered anthropologists and archaeologists enliven the best recent case in a long-standing series notable for humor, clued detection, and a continuing emphasis on food and travel.
** Hal White: The Mysteries of Reverend Dean, Lighthouse, $14.95. Six impossible crime problems confront retired small-town Washington clergyman Thaddeus Dean. On purely literary grounds, there's plenty to nitpick, mainly perfunctory characterization, but the plots are so ingenious that John Dickson Carr fans and other classical devotees won't want to miss these contributions to a demanding and in-creasingly rare criminous art form. The Christian religious messages should bother no one but the most militant atheist. Rex Stout's first two Nero Wolfe novels, Fer-de-Lance (1934) and The League of Frightened Men (1935), have been reprinted together in a new trade paperback (Bantam, $15), with introductions by Loren D. Estleman and Robert Goldsborough respectively, affording an opportunity to discover (or rediscover) one of the great series of American detective novels.
In terms of sheer quality, it would be hard to find an anthology to top Murder Short & Sweet (Chicago Review Press, $19.95), edited by Paul D. Staudohar, whose introduction credits the importance of EQMM as a source for great stories. Old hands will find the contents overfamiliar, but anyone who has not read such classic tales as Thomas Burke's “The Hands of Mr. Ottermole,” Roald Dahl's “Lamb to the Slaughter,” Anthony Berkeley's “The Avenging Chance,” Vincent Starrett's “The Eleventh Juror,” or Lord Dunsany's “The Two Bottles of Relish” should amend that gap. Also included is comparably excellent material by such contemporaries as Brendan DuBois, Lawrence Block, Donald E. Westlake, Ruth Rendell, and most surprisingly, John Updike. Principal lack is any representation of the hardboiled school, and the gender balance skews male: only four of the 25 stories are by women (Christie, Sayers, Rendell, and Anthony Gilbert).
(c) 2008 by Jon L. Breen
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Novelette: COUNTING CHICKENS by Amy Myers
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Art by Allen Davis
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Many of Amy Myers's stories for EQMM are historical, either in her Tom Wasp chimney sweep series or the Victorian chef Auguste Didier series. This month she provides an observant contemporary tale s
et in an upscale housing development. Her most recent books in print are from a series that combines historical and contemporary. See the characters Marsh and Daughter in Murder in the Mist (Severn House ‘08) and in the large-print edition of Murder and the Golden Goblet.
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I grew up in a moral household. For my seventh birthday, having reached an age of understanding, I was presented with a collection of Aesop's fables; its precepts, so my father assured me, could be guaranteed to see me safely through life. I read them eagerly, learning one exciting revelation after another. Although they seemed to have no immediate relevance to a schoolchild of my tender years in the small village of Lower Beeching, they seemed to me to have great moral worth. Appearances, I learned, for example, are often deceiving, any excuse would serve a tyrant, and familiarity breeds contempt. However, it was a particular favourite of my father's that emblazoned its glory on my mind.
"Remember,” he would thunder, “that the gods help those that help themselves."
I therefore resolved to help myself at every opportunity. It served me well, in my life, work, and marriage—until I reached the age of thirty-four.
Then I helped myself to my neighbour's wife.
* * * *
In Her Majesty's prisons there is ample time available both for telling stories and for Aesop's great works, for I have, of course, brought my copy with me in order to study where I went astray. How had the concept of helping myself failed me? Did “self-conceit lead to self-destruction"? Mindful of Aesop's advice in this respect, I shall keep myself suitably anonymous while I recount as objectively as possible how my self-destruction came about. For much of the story that follows I was present as one of the eight involved, and for the rest I have based my tale on the story that later emerged.
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