Murder — His and Hers

Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins 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.

Intro/Hers: Barbara Collins

Back in the 1950s, when there were only a few TV channels to watch, three shows brought to a screeching halt the mayhem in the kid-infested house I grew up in: Perry Mason (my mother had a mad crush on Raymond Burr), Maverick (my mother had a mad crush on James Garner), and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (my mother did not have a mad crush on the great director, but loved the stories). These programs must have had a profound effect on me, because the key ingredients of each episode — mystery, humor, irony — seem to make up the recipe I follow for my own short stories.

Even though I have worked in the novel format, to me, the perfect way to tell a tale is the short story. It’s great for impatient people with short attention spans, one of which I am. And my husband, who encouraged me to write and has been a great teacher, has always touted, “Write what you’d like to read.”

Some of my favorite stories are ones that we’ve collaborated on; it’s a little bit me, a little bit him. Having a male/female perspective is always interesting. And our writing styles are so similar (no surprise) that, come the end result, even we sometimes can’t tell who wrote what.

Besides my husband — who is one of the smartest, best writers in the whole wide world — I owe a debt of gratitude to Ed Gorman and Marty Greenberg for publishing my stories in their wonderful anthologies.

Another debt is owed, of course. The stories in this book are sometimes by me, sometimes by my husband, sometimes by the two of us, working together. But the important collaborator, in any story, is the reader.

We’ve done our job — the rest is up to you!

Eddie Haskell in a Short Skirt

The Polk County Prison was located just north of Des Moines on four well-manicured acres. The newly constructed twenty-million dollar complex had no unsightly barbed wire fence surrounding its premises, nor a guard station at the front entry, or anything else that made it look like a prison. To the passer-by, the two-story red brick octagonal building might have been a clinic of some kind, a place you might go to have a skin tag lopped off, or an impacted molar extracted. Only the back of the building gave its purpose away: rows of small barred windows ran its length, windows so tiny that a man — or woman — couldn’t possibly squeeze through.

I’d been to this prison just one other time, with my father, Sam Knight, to visit a client. He and I — my name is Rebecca — are partners in an investigations firm in the city. (You might have read about us in People magazine last year for cracking “The Cutthroat Cowgirl Case” — their title, not ours.)

Getting back to the prison, I was really impressed by this state-of-the-art facility, with its laser sensors, computer-operated doors, and prisoner tracking bracelets. Even the cells were fairly comfortable, clean and new.

Anyway, mine was.

I was in for murdering my best friend, Vickie.

Footsteps echoed down the concrete hallway coming toward me, sounding like pop-guns going off, but I remained motionless on the little bed, my hands clenched tightly in my lap. Then a deputy sheriff, tall and gangly, was punching in numbers on a security pad, opening the barred door, informing me my father was here.

In the visitation room, which was small but not claustrophobic, my father and I sat at a long table, the width of which was between us. He looked older than his sixty-four years, older than I’d ever seen him, his craggy face drawn, bronze tan faded from the long winter months. But his eyes were strong, determined. If he was at all frightened, those ol’ blue eyes did not betray him.

I, too, must have looked a sight: no make-up, shoulder length brown hair uncombed, and very unfashionable in the orange prison dress with orange slip-on tennies.

He cleared his throat. “Are they treating you okay, pumpkin?” He’d hardly called me that since grade school.

I nodded numbly.

“Got a call in to Walter Conlon,” he told me. “He’s a good criminal lawyer.”

I nodded again. I would need the best.

Now my father stood up and came around the side of the table to stand before me, running the fingers of one hand on the table top, looking down at that hand. His voice was soft, even gentle. “You understand bail won’t even be an issue until you’ve been arraigned.”