Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 126, No. 1. Whole No. 767, July 2005

The Jury Box by Jon L. Breen

With the corporate blockbuster mentality of the major New York publishers and resultant shakeout, more and more crime fiction is being published through small specialist and regional companies, print-on-demand, and other unconventional channels. But how are these books to find their audience? Some (though none of those considered below) are sub-professional. Many would benefit from more editorial help. A few would be right at home on the most exalted commercial list. The publishers of the eight novels under review are located (respectively) in Chicago; Denver; Frederick, Maryland; New York City, but by way of Seattle; Nashville; Holliston, Massachusetts; and (the last two) Baltimore, while of the three original anthologies, one comes from Dallas and two from Doylestown, Pennsylvania. The Sullivan and Brewer novels and Bracken’s two anthologies are hardcovers; the rest are in trade-paperback format.

**** Milton Hirsch: The Shadow of Justice, ABA Criminal Justice Section, $14. The American Bar Association’s first publication of a novel is a winner, one of the finest fictional depictions of the legal life in court and out. A Miami trial for drug trafficking is seen from the viewpoint of Judge Clark Addison, whose old D.A.’s office partner is appearing for the defense. Both men are mourning a police friend’s suicide and murder of his wife and child. On its face the trial seems routine, but defense lawyer Hirsch brings an insider’s knowing eye to the proceedings, and the wrap-up includes some clued detection.

*** Steve Brewer: Boost, Speck Press, $24. Albuquerque crook Sam Hill steals cars for a living, with a specialty in classics. Things go awry when he finds a corpse in the trunk of the 1965 Thunderbird he has just appropriated and he realizes he has been set up. Veteran pro Brewer keeps the wheels turning throughout this seriocomic thriller, in spirit somewhere between between a Westlake and a Westlake-as-Richard-Stark.

*** Eleanor Sullivan: Deadly Diversion, Hilliard Harris, $28.95. In her second case, Monika Everhardt, head Intensive Care Unit nurse in a St. Louis hospital, deals with personnel shortages, hospital union activity, missing drugs, menacing gangsters, and the premature death of a terminal cancer patient. The telling and characters are expertly handled, and the specialized background is rendered in warts-and-all detail. (EQMM readers know there was another Eleanor Sullivan, the former editor-in-chief who died in 1991. In the back-cover blurb of her reprinted 1991 anthology Fifty Best Mysteries [Carroll & Graf, $15], originally titled Fifty Years of the Best from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, her latter-day namesake gets an unintended plug when EQMM’s Sullivan is mistakenly credited with “the classic mystery novel Twice Dead,” the previous Everhardt case.)

*** Anne Argula: Homicide My Own, Pleasure Boat Studio, $16. Two Spokane cops, fiftyish female narrator Quinn and her young male partner Odd Gunderson, are sent to an island Indian reservation to pick up a middle-aged man who has run off with a 14-year-old girl. They become involved in reopening the investigation of the thirty-year-old double murder of a teenage couple. The narrative is quirkily distinctive, the characters refreshingly offbeat, but those with low tolerance for paranormal detection may resist the reincarnation-based plot.

*** Rick Dewhurst: Bye Bye, Bertie, Broadman & Holman, $10.99. Christian private eye Joe LaFlam moonlights as a cab driver in Vancouver, British Columbia, but thinks he’s in Seattle. When he embarks on a 21-day fast in the hope God will send him a wife, a beautiful fellow worshipper asks his help in ransoming her kidnapped sister, and he discovers the existence of an international conspiracy to establish world government. The author, a Canadian pastor, brings a satirical perspective to all the great religious and moral quandaries and provides plenty of laughs even for readers outside the born-again culture. The Library of Congress subject heading (Christian Life — Humor) is a more accurate tag than crime or mystery novel, but the case is solved after a fashion.

** Robert I. Katz: The Anatomy Lesson, Willowgate, $13.95. When a Halloween prank involving cadaver parts is followed by the murder of an anatomy professor at a Manhattan teaching hospital, police detective Lew Barent and surgeon Dr. Richard Kurtz join forces for the second time. The story develops on excessively standardized lines, but the expertly realized background and the solid professionalism of the prose and dialogue mark Katz a writer to watch.

** Dan A. Sproul: Handicapper, PublishAmerica, $24.95. Readers of EQMM and AHMM won’t be surprised that Sproul delivers smooth prose, vivid characters, an insider’s knowledge of thoroughbred racing, and some satisfying private-eye detection. But this long-winded saga, spanning 1945 to 1978, loses some impetus after an excellent beginning, partly because an overload of racing and betting detail pushes aside the inverted detection plot for long stretches.

** Jan GL Pope: Deadly Dreams, PublishAmerica, $19.95. New Mexico resident Lucy McLaren’s husband is horribly murdered in a way that echoes her recurring nightmare. When similar deaths of her acquaintances follow, retired cop Sol Myers offers his help but is initially rebuffed. After a rocky start, the novel establishes a firm grip on the reader by the midway point. You’ll probably anticipate the two main surprises, but the wildly elaborate plot is nicely worked out.

Mysteries of the Ozarks, Volume I (Skyward, $14.95), edited by Ellen Gray Massey, is primarily of regional interest. Spur Award winner Jory Sherman, who leads off, is the best-known contributor, but in my sampling I found borderline horror stories by C.J. Winters (“Missing Pete McGuire”) and Shirleen Sando (“The Monster at Peter Bottom Cave”) more diverting. “The Man Who Cried ‘David’ ” by Radine Trees Nehring makes effective use of a Civil War battle reenactment in a short-story outing for the detectives of her novels, Carrie McCrite and Henry King.

Michael Bracken has edited Fedora III and Small Crimes (Betancourt, $32.95 each). The latter volume, with its tantalizing theme of serious consequences resulting from seemingly minor infractions, is the better of the two based on my samplings. EQMM favorite Neil Schofield’s “Chainmail” is a droll lead-off; Robert L. Fish Award winner Ted Hertel, Jr. provides a fictional illustration of the puzzling underworld expression popularized by Mad magazine, “It’s Crackers to Slip a Rozzer the Dropsey in Snide”; Stephen D. Rogers’s “Takeout” is a good specimen of the ironic short-short story; and the concluding novella “Dreams Unborn,” which though much grimmer may remind you of American Graffiti, is the best piece of fiction I’ve read by editor Bracken.

If Fedora III, subtitled Even More Private Eyes; Even More Tough Guys, is less successful, it may be because some of the contributors are so insistently, self-consciously hard, sexy, and noirer than thou. Lee Goldberg has an interesting gimmick in “Bumsickle.” J.L. Abramo, a winner of the Private Eye Writers of America/St. Martin’s award for best first novel, contributes “One Hit Wonder” featuring Jake Diamond, whose surname is one of the commonest among sleuths for hire: there were Blake Edwards’s Richard Diamond of radio and TV; Mark Schorr’s Red Diamond; and Edward D. Hoch’s Al Diamond, later renamed Al Darlan.