For nearly sixty years, Ellery Queen has been the polestar of the mystery short story, finding and publishing the newest writers, the latest expansions of the genre, everything that keeps the field exciting and fresh. Ellery Queen’s Department of First Stories, the first published work by a brand-new writer, has been a staple of the magazine forever, and an amazing number of those stories have made it onto best-of-the-year lists. I’m happy to say we have one this year, “Jumping with Jim” by Geary Danihy, that is I think one of the best debuts ever, told with such assurance and skill that I had to keep looking back at the first page; yes, this is the Department of First Stories. Long may it continue.
It’s been a long time since the mystery story was no more than a puzzle acted out by marionettes for the amusement of the cloistered Victorian mind. In the stories in this volume there are surprises galore, but they are surprises of character, of motivation, of story, not merely surprises of mechanical puzzle-playing. Although it is certainly possible for some writer somewhere to come up with a new and richer variant on, say, the locked-room story, there’s no tired smoke-and-mirrors exercise of that former sort to be found here. Every one of our writers has more serious fish to fry.
And many show their awareness that they are writing at the end of the millennium, that, in a way, everything that was published in 1999, in any genre, served as a kind of summing-up. Even our Department of First Stories entry begins by contrasting past with present, the current narrator with Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. At the other extreme, Robert Girardi’s “The Defenestration of Aba Sid” and half a dozen of our other stories all draw a picture, clear and concise, of just where America found itself at the end of the twentieth century.
I suppose that must inevitably lead me into a discussion of the future of the mystery short story. Our genre began with the publication, in April 1841, of “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe, so it is now entering its third century and its 159th year, so wouldn’t I like to say where I expect it will travel next? “Whither,” and all that?
Well, no. I’m terrible at predictions, always have been. I don’t even know what I’m going to do next, so I’m not likely to be a particularly reliable oracle when it comes to the fate of an entire genre of popular fiction. Come to think of it, it’s probably my inability to guess what’s going to happen next that makes me such a fan of the mystery short story in the first place.
More a fan than a practitioner, I’m afraid. I’ve done a few short stories myself, enough to inform my admiration when I see the thing done well, but I admit I find it hard. In the novel I feel more at home, I can stretch and wander and take my time. In the short story, I can’t be self-indulgent, I can’t explain at length, I can’t distract the reader with subplots or amusing but ultimately irrelevant characters and settings.
All of which, of course, is the point. A good short story is a jewel in miniature, as concise and carefully wrought as a fine watch, but at the same time alive. Like the stories herein.
Donald E. Westlake
Doug Allyn
Miracles! Happen!
From Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
A neon sign on the mansion’s sprawling lawn said: Miracles! Happen! I paused a moment, considering the idea. And my fingertips strayed unconsciously to the scars on my face.
Miracles? Not likely. The way my luck usually runs, I get warm and fuzzy when I catch an even break.
The guy who owned the estate knew a bit about miracles, though. Evan Grace Ministries. Radio, TV, national politics. Not bad for a preacher who’d been touring with tent-show revivals twenty years ago. A lifetime ago.
No tents for Evan nowadays. His Grosse Pointe palace sprawls across three waterfront lots on Lake St. Clair, a Victorian manor with a stable, a six-car garage, and a state-of-the-art broadcast studio. Evan can preach a sermon in the morning, take his fat-cat contributors out to lunch, and still sleep in his own bed.
With a friend of mine.
So perhaps Miracles do Happen. Sometimes. Not very often.
A black funeral wreath was hanging on the front door. I rang the bell beside it. Chimes played the first two bars of “Amazing Grace.”
A linebacker opened the door — six foot four, crew cut, a two-hundred-fifty-pound hardbody in a perfectly tailored blue suit. Armani, from the look of it. A black armband around the bicep.
I was wearing a black canvas duster, jeans, and a face that had been seriously rearranged by a patch of concrete.
“Yes?”
“Hi. I’m here to see Mrs. Grace. My name’s Axton.”
“I’m sorry, there’s been a death in the family. They aren’t seeing visitors.”
“I’m not visiting. Mrs. Grace asked me to come by.”
The linebacker looked me over doubtfully. “Under the circumstances, another day would be better. If you call—”
“She called me two hours ago, sport. If she’s changed her mind, fine. But why don’t you check first? Please.”
Another man, equally large, materialized at my shoulder. “A problem here, Mr. Klein?”
“Not yet,” the suit in the doorway said. “Keep our friend here company, Jack. Because if you’re a tab reporter, we’re gonna haul you out back and show you the error of your ways. Sport.”
He closed the door in my face. I glanced sidelong at the new arrival. Also crew-cut, but darker, Hispanic maybe, and his suit was strictly Sears, off the rack. He was wearing a miniature earpiece with a small curly cord that vanished beneath his collar. A professional security type, not just a college boy borrowed for the day.
“What’s with the wreath?” I asked.
“Maybe it’s for you,” Jack said. He wasn’t smiling. The door opened again.
“It’s okay, Jack,” Klein said. “Sorry about the mix-up, Mr. Axton. It’s a bad day for all of us. Follow me, please.”
I trailed him down a long entrance corridor into the living room, past a dozen people dressed in black or wearing armbands, clustered in small groups, voices subdued. A few glanced up curiously. I clearly didn’t belong here today. But no one said anything.
Klein led me down a second corridor, rapped once on an ornate oak door, and showed me inside. A comfortable library, floor to ceiling bookshelves, leather chairs, a fire glowing in the grate. Krystal Grace, nee Doyle, was staring into the flames, lost in thought.
Her blond hair was shorter now, worn up in a bouffant. Understatedly elegant. As was her unadorned black dress. It had been nearly ten years. It could have been ten minutes.
“Hey, Ax,” she said to the fire, not turning. She was holding a brandy snifter, swirling it slowly.
“Hey, Krystal. How have you been?”
She glanced up and realized Klein was standing just inside the door. “You can leave us, Jerry.”
“Mr. Grace asked me to—”
“Get the hell out!”
“Yes, ma’am.” He hesitated in the doorway, memorizing my face, then vanished.
“Sorry about that,” she said.
“Krys, what’s up? Is this some kind of a wake or what?”
She turned back to the fire, shadows playing on her face. “Don’t you watch TV? It’s been all over the news.”
“I’ve been in Cincinnati. Just got back last night.”
“The wake’s for... my son Joshua, Ax. He died yesterday.”