Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 102, No. 4 & 5. Whole No. 618 & 619, October 1993

The Jury Box by Jon L. Breen

© 1993 by Jon L. Breen

Trying to define a mystery subcategory can be tricky. For example, Mary Higgins Clark’s introduction to Malice Domestic 2: An Anthology of Original Traditional Mystery Stories (Pocket, $4.99) quotes Mary Morman, a knowledgeable fan and founder of the Malice Domestic mystery convention held annually in the Washington, D.C. area, as follows: “The root of the word ‘domestic’ is the Latin domos, meaning ‘home’ or ‘house.’ Books and stories that fit the Malice Domestic genre involve the protagonist not in a professional capacity but through home relationships. They involve sisters, brothers, friends, and lovers. In addition to home relationships, Malice Domestic often breaches the sanctuary of the home itself. Bodies in the bathtub, corpses on the hearthrug...” (pages ix-x).

My suspicion that Morman’s definition is a bit too narrow was borne out with the first story in the collection, Amanda Cross’s “Who Shot Bryon Boyd?”, a case for English professor Kate Fansler that doesn’t fit under the definition at all, involving a crime not in the home and professionally motivated. The Cross story is far from the high standard of her novels, a weak volley in detective fiction’s wearying gender wars. But after that, things begin to look up.

Several other series characters, all of whom coincidentally operate in historical periods, are in better form than Fansler. K. K. Beck’s twenties flapper Iris Cooper appears in “A Romance in the Rockies,” which is marginally MD if you consider Iris only at home when travelling. Ed Gorman’s 1890s Cedar Rapids policewoman Anna Tolan encounters murder among members of a charismatic sect in “Anna and the Snake People,” while Carole Nelson Douglas’s Doyle spinoff Irene Adler is in especially good form in the pointedly feminist 1886 case “Parris Green,” brought her way by an entertainingly presented Oscar Wilde. The latter two involve domestic situations, though in each the detective is called in rather than directly involved.

The collection’s non-series tales are more apt to fit the MD definition, including “Cold and Deep,” a chilling tale of a family Christmas by Frances Fyfield; “Dog Television,” domestic crime from a canine viewpoint by Robert Barnard; and “... That Married Dear Old Dad,” a fresh variant on a venerable crime-story situation by Margaret Maron. Also interesting, but not MD, are “The Return of Ma Barker,” a police procedural by Gary Alexander, and a very much off-the-wall new metaphor of death, Susan Dunlap’s “Checkout.” The Cross and Dunlap stories illustrate the downside and the upside of original anthologies: the former a big-name writer with an inferior piece of work, the latter another big name with a highly experimental story that might not otherwise have found a ready market.

Illustrating the merits of the reprint anthology, which can draw proven material from an extended time period, is Swindlers & Grifters (Carroll & Graf, $18.95), the latest compilation from the back-files of EQMM and AHMM, edited by Cynthia Manson. Leading off in a darkly humorous vein is a 1957 tale, one of Jim Thompson’s two short stories about inept but despicable conman Mitch Allison, “The Frightening Frammis.” Francis M. Nevins, Jr.’s more likable Milo Turner appears in “The Western Film Scam,” a well-plotted 1980 story that combines old movie lore with a variation on the Queenian dying message. Congame stories are especially well suited to the twist-in-the-tail O. Henry surprise, as illustrated in Robert L. Fish’s “One of the Oldest Con Games” (1977) and Donald E. Westlake’s “Just the Lady We’re Looking For” (1964). Also present in strong form are such writers as Julian Symons, A1 Nussbaum, and William Campbell Gault. The high quality holds up in the last and newest story in the book, Jacklyn Butler’s “The Messenger” (1992), which describes an unusual scam that is arguably more humane than most.

**** Susan Dunlap: Time Expired, $18.95. The latest in the reliable series about Berkeley policewoman Jill Smith delivers an especially fine combination of quirky characters, complex plot, and strong sense of place. After the suspenseful hostage negotiation sequence of the opening chapters has played itself out, other problems remain (or emerge) for Smith and her colleagues. Who is behind the series of generally applauded pranks directed at the city’s meter maids, who come in both genders? And why is a terminally ill local attorney, whose support of radical clients has made her the object of a police dart-board, murdered in a nursing home? Dunlap is one of the best active proponents of the classical-style police procedural.

*** Parnell Hall: Actor, Mysterious, $18.95. New York private eye Stanley Hastings gets an unexpected chance to return to his theatrical roots when asked by an old friend to play the star role in Shaw’s Arms and the Man, filling in with two days’ notice for an actor who has died. (The back jacket shows author Hall in a 1968 performance of the same role, Captain Bluntschli.) If you enjoy the backstage backgrounds of writers like Ngaio Marsh and Simon Brett, and if the prospect of an unashamedly old-fashioned whodunit with no apparent concern beyond reader pleasure is attractive, this is your book. The outrageously theatrical confront-the-murderer scene may be unique in detective fiction, though it has an acknowledged cinematic precedent.

*** Aaron Elkins: Old Scores, Scribner’s, $20. In his third adventure, Chris Norgren, the Seattle Art Museum’s curator of Renaissance and Baroque Art, travels to France to check out the offered gift of a Rembrandt — with some odd strings attached by a donor with a penchant for elaborate jokes on the art world. This is an extremely enjoyable book with vivid characters, an amply-clued puzzle, and much fascinating background information. Norgren is low-key and likable, very similar to the author’s better-known Gideon Oliver. He tells his own story, where Oliver appears in third person, and I thought the book had slightly fewer eating scenes than a typical Oliver adventure — until Elkins managed to describe two meals on one page late in the going.

*** Joseph Hansen: Bohannon’& Country, Viking, $19. Hansen’s rancher and sometime private eye Hack Bohannon, a strong second string to the author’s better-known Dave Brandstetter, appears in three of the five stories here, and they are crisply efficient mystery novels in miniature. But the two tales in which Bohannon does not appear are the prizes of the collection. “Molly’s Aim” (originally published in EQMM) does a remarkable job of getting inside the head of its young, female protagonist, and “McIntyre’s Donald,” which involves some of Hack’s supporting cast but not the man himself, is one of those stories that keeps the reader guessing whether its events are supernatural, psychological, or something else.

Bantam continues its reprinting of Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe saga with a cleverly matched pair at $4.99 each: The Mother Hunt (1963), introduced by Marilyn Wallace, and The Father Hunt (1968), introduced by Donald E. Westlake. The two stories are good ones; the celebrity intros make some provocative points (Wallace credits Stout, via Archie Goodwin, with a pioneering understanding of “gender differences in communication styles”; Westlake finds Wolfe unlikable and not “that clever a detective”); and the material in the “World of Rex Stout” appendices, reproduced correspondence between the author and his publishers, is more interesting than that the old book covers and magazine illustrations offered in some of the books in the series.