Murder — His and Hers

Intro/His: Max Allan Collins

I share with my wife a love for the twist ending, and I suppose our short stories tend to be a little old-fashioned... though in a good way.

Recently I co-edited (with Jeff Gelb) a collection of short stories (Flesh and Blood) that included a cross-section of writers in the mystery/suspense genre, from old pros to young punks. I liked all of the stories — or I wouldn’t have bought them! — but several stood out. Writers like Ed Hoch and Don Westlake (to name just two longtime professionals who contributed to that anthology) crafted the kind of well-made story we don’t see much these days. Every nut, every bolt, in its proper place, every screw turn of the plot perfectly tightened... with a final pay-off that provided a smile, or a tingle at the back of the neck... or both.

These days, we see some very interesting stories — unusual ones, daring ones, rule- and ground-breakers. But we rarely see the kind of perfectly fashioned story that used to be, well, fairly commonplace in our popular culture. The great weekly “slick” magazines — Saturday Evening Post and Collier’s come to mind — and the wonderful pulps — Black Mask anyone? — are long gone; so are the half-hour radio and TV dramas. I grew up on Tales from the Crypt and other great comic books (mostly EC’s); and — while HBO mined those ancient ghoulish funnies for several seasons a while back — those are long gone, too.

This makes the short story a sort of lost art. A lot of the short stories written today — many of them good, even terrific — are the work of novelists... like me... taking an occasional dip into the short-fiction pool, at the invite of the editor of an anthology, or to take a crack at the few remaining markets, like Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Some top-notch novelists — like John Lutz, Ed Gorman and Lawrence Block — are also first-rate short story writers; and I like to think I’m not bad at it myself, if not in the league of those mentioned.

But I’m not a born short story writer. I think in complicated, complex ways that make for a good novel, and it’s difficult for me to work in miniature. My wife, Barb — who is swiftly becoming a skilled novelist, by the way — has a knack for precision work. You’ll see examples of that in the pages ahead.

Now and then we write a story together (we always help each other on individual projects) and we’ve never had a problem, none of the expected marital battles. Perhaps she’s just used to dealing with my bloated, fragile ego. Or maybe it’s just that we stay out of each other’s way, after we come up with a plot in a story conference over lunch or on a Sunday afternoon drive — she writes her draft, and I write mine.

Now and then we trade off sections. There’s more of me in the Sam Knight voice in “Eddie Haskell in a Short Skirt,” and more of Barb in Rebecca’s. She is notorious, in our collaborations, for leaving me dangling: in the middle of a beautifully crafted sequence, in which I’m all caught up as a reader, I will encounter FIGHT SCENE HERE.

Anyway, we work well together — and we do well on our own. We hope you’ll find the tales in this collection — whether hers, mine or ours — worthy examples of the almost lost art of the well-made tale with a twist of wry.