"The Accomplice" is an early story by John D. MacDonald (who never wrote anything actually titled Cape Fear, but more on that below), one which was not published till this issue of The Strand, though I'm not sure why MacDonald didn't circulate it. It's not one of his best stories, to be sure, but it's a reasonably good, even mildly thoughtful, bit of kitchen-sink hardboiled writing that will do his memory no damage. A not terribly bright and reasonably tough 17-year-old young man, recently hired at a small grocery store, catches the eye of the wife and co-proprietor of the shop, who encourages him to think about throwing in with her to dispose of her coworker/owner husband and what comes of that. It's rather deft, even if MacDonald was still becoming the JDM of not many years later and for the rest of his career, and the resolution isn't a hackneyed one, even more than 3/4ths of a century after its composition, as editor Andrew Gulli is happy to note. Gulli makes a regular habit of looking for "lost"/unpublished work by legendary crime-fiction writers (and some less well-known for CF) to highlight, and leads off his editorial in this issue by noting how he was introduced to MacDonald's work by the first (of two, so far) films called Cape Fear (based on JDM's brilliant novel The Executioners, a fact which Gulli fails to note, albeit some editions of the paperback reprints have all but replaced the novel's title with the films'). What's (also) problematic about this elision is that both films, very much including the better first adaptation, are dumbed-down considerably from JDM's novel, which involves two parents, and their family (not least their daughter), imperiled by a vicious ex-con seeking revenge against the attorney father...the parents become the Executioners of the title, and this is dealt with in the novel far more sensibly and engagingly than in either film, as well as with a gravitas that is completely absent from either film. (Also, Gulli notes in passing the similarity of approach and sophistication Ross Macdonald's work had in several key ways with JDM's, while somewhat adorably adding "no relation"--which the different spelling of the names might've tipped the casual reader to, though Gulli could also have noted that RM's actual name was Kenneth Millar.) Nonetheless, it's good to have this story available, though one wonders if The Strand is doing all the business it might these days, as the 12/24 issue is still the current one, which I bought today from the increasingly barren newsstands of the most nearby B&N chain bookstore (picked up the "Dell"/Penny Press fiction magazines, and the current issues of DownBeat and The Nation), in what for me amounts to a lavish splurge these days. A "new" JDM story bumped out the half-done SSW I had planned; this current issue of The Strand asks newsstand proprietors to display it till May, so one presumably has some time yet to pick it up, where it hasn't sold out. For more of today's stories and assemblies of same (and at least one short play this week), please see Patti Abbott's blog. |
Sweet Freedom
Wednesday, February 19, 2025
SSW: John D. MacDonald: "The Accomplice" (a previously unpublished short story), THE STRAND MAGAZINE, December 2024: Short Story Wednesday
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
SSW: "Mosaic" by Mariah Rigg, BALTIMORE REVIEW Winter 2022, edited by Barbara Westwood Diehl; "Gershwin's Ghost" by Jerome Charyn; "Simone de Beauvoir is Living on Mars" by Mary Grimm; ALASKA QUARTERLY REVIEW, Winter/Spring 2024, edited by Ronald Spatz: Short Story Wednesday
these can be read gratis at these links:
"Gershwin's Ghost" by Jerome Charyn
"Simone de Beauvoir is Living on Mars" by Mary Grimm
(sadly, the two AQR pieces at this hour have slightly distracting transcription typos as posted, though not so much that one can't enjoy the work as apparently intended.)
Part of what's interesting about these three stories, chosen not quite at random from two magazines I've read on occasion over their years, is that the Rigg and the Charyn are both about children more or less abandoned by one of their parents/replacement parent, and how that affected both the child/eventual adult and parent errant. The Grimm is a story of apparatus (one could consider it a poem), a series of numbered lines/bullet points about de Beauvoir's latter-day career on an international Mars colony, where she is a much (though not universally)-respected teacher, and perhaps also a parental or certainly a mentoring figure to some extent.
Mariah Rigg is a relatively young writer, still, with notable credits artistically and academically, whom I was put onto as she is very rooted in the Hawaii of her birth, though much of her career seems to have been spent in the contiguous states. In "Mosaic," her protagonist might not be patterned too closely on herself, but is a tile artist who has married a man whose first wife had died suddenly, leaving both him and their then-infant daughter. The story is mostly about the tension of events as she realizes the depth of the bond she's formed with her still-young stepdaughter, even as the marriage can be considered cooling, and how things can and will go if she leaves them. A meditation on how we can change the lives of others, even if against our will and desire to be better for them, as best we can.
Jerome Charyn takes up a slightly less Felt, slightly more humorous (but only slightly) approach to the son of a bohemian writer, who left his socialite wife and his then very young son to return to the environs of his early family life, near his parents. The son, who has just reached his 21yo Majority for purposes of trust funds, seeks him out to see how he is doing, and to get some answers, while dropping off a big check just to help him along (as the father is assumed to be in relatively tight straits, and was in early middle age when the son was born). Things are not quite as dire as the son assumed, he learns when they meet, and the young man does get a number of his questions answered, some surprisingly.
Mary Grimm's story isn't quite a surreal joke, even if the 156yo de Beauvoir, suddenly discovered some years ago at the opening to be still alive and interested in taking a teaching position in the schools of the well-established internationally-collaborative Martian colony, could be and is to some extent the basis of one (clearly, some U.S. presidents less contentious than Trump have been able to work together fruitfully with other world leaders, even if the Martian colonists do feel some tension with what they always refer to in all-caps as EARTH). It mixes no few details of SdB's life as reported along with such quotidian matters as the former French instructor at the colony school who felt a bit stiff about being replaced by the legendary writer in that task; the footnotes are very amusing, in toto.
I can cheerfully recommend all three.
For more of today's stories, as nearly always delivered more promptly overnight Tuesday/early Wednesday, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
Wednesday, January 29, 2025
SSW: Robert Bloch: "The Movie People" THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, (F&SF), October 1969, edited by Edward Ferman; Jorge Luis Borges: "The Gospel According to Mark" in translation in THE NEW YORKER, 23 October 1971, edited by William Shawn; Marcelle Dubé: "Sky Lanterns" THE SATURDAY EVENING POST, November/December 2024, edited by Patrick Perry; Carl Jacobi: "Phantom Brass" RAILROAD STORIES, August 1934 (editor uncredited); Joyce Carol Oates: "The Maker of Parables" KENYON REVIEW, Spring 1990, edited by David H. Lynn; Wilma Shore: "A Bulletin from the Trustees of the Institute for Advanced Research at Marmouth, Massachusetts" F&SF, August 1964, edited by Avram Davidson: Short Story Wednesday
Bloch: can be read gratis from the paperback edition of his collection Cold Chills at this site.
Borges: can be read gratis at this teacher's aid site, from the US Bantam paperback edition of the Borges collection Dr. Brodie's Report (as translated by Norman Thomas di Giovanni in consultation with Borges); originally in the newspaper La Nación, 2 August 1970
Dubé; can be read gratis at The Saturday Evening Post site.
Jacobi: can be read gratis online in his collection Revelations in Black at this link.
Oates: can be read online at the Kenyon Review site (free account access).
Shore: can be read gratis from the online posting of Robert Silverberg's anthology Voyagers in Time
The other writer still with us is Joyce Carol Oates, whose highlighted contribution is a vignette verging on a parable, a fantasy that reminds me far too much of me, if I had achieved a bit more in these directions...I suspect it reminds Oates of herself in some senses as well.
Thursday, January 23, 2025
2024: THE STARK HOUSE ANTHOLOGY edited by Rick Ollerman and Gregory Shepard (Stark House); DEATH COMES TOO LATE by Charles Ardai (Hard Case Crime): CF publishers celebrate their notable 2024 anniversaries (25th/20th)...and index to BEAT TO A PULP: ROUND 1, edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash
7 * Stark House Press: The First 25 Years * Gregory Shepard * in
10 * Introduction * Rick Ollerman * in
24 * A Matter of Balance * Peter Rabe (ss) 2024 (first publication)
35 * Invitation to an Accident * "Wade Miller" (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine July 1955
48 * The Tormented * James McKimmey (nv) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine August 1967
64 * Murderer #2 * Jean Potts (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine January 1961
75 * To Kill a Wife * Lionel White (nv) Murder September 1956
89 * So Curse the Day * Jada M. Davis (na) 2024 (first publication)
198 * Art for Money’s Sake * Dan J. Marlowe (ss) The Elks Magazine February 1970
204 * Chester Drum Takes Over * Stephen Marlowe (ss) Ellery Queen’s Anthology #25, Spring/Summer 1973
216 * Sleep Without Dreams * Frank Kane (ss) [Johnny Liddell series] Manhunt February 1956
228 * The Memory Guy * Henry Kane (nv) [Peter Chambers series] Come Seven/Come Death ed. Henry Morrison, Pocket Books, 1965
241 * Nothing in My Way * Orrie Hitt (ss) Smashing Detective Stories July 1955
250 * Preventive Medicine * Harry Whittington (ss) Trapped Detective Story Magazine August 1956
256 * Die, Darling, Die * Gil Brewer (nv) Justice January 1956
275 * The Geek-Girl * "Day Keene" (nv) Adam October 1953
297 * Woman Missing * Helen Nielsen (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine May 1960
318 * Backbite * Lorenz Heller (as "Fredrick Lorenz") (ss) Justice January 1956
323 * Angie * Ed Gorman (ss) 999 ed. Al Sarrantonio, Avon Books, 1999
336 * Night Games * Bill Pronzini (ss) Bullets and Other Hurting Things: A Tribute to Bill Crider ed. Rick Ollerman, Down & Out Books, 2021
343 * The Silent One * Fletcher Flora (ss) Hunted Detective Story Magazine #7, December 1955
349 * Beware of the Dog * Fredric Brown (ss) Ten Detective Aces February 1943, as "Hound of Hell"
354 * Hit Me * Rick Ollerman (ss) Down & Out: The Magazine v1 #1, 2017
370 * Axe * Gregory Shepard (ss) 2024 (first publication)
378 * Last Night at Skipper’s Lounge * Timothy J. Lockhart (ss) Down & Out: The Magazine v1 #2, 2017
390 * Barbarians (Chapters 1-3) * Robert W. Chambers (novel excerpt, 1917)
402 * Politics Pays Best * E. Phillips Oppenheim (ss) [Major Radford series] The Country Gentleman February 1930
418 * The Dead Man’s Eyes * Robert Silverberg (ss) Playboy August 1988
432 * Disorderly * Barry N. Malzberg (ss) The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Magazine January 1968
436 * Instruction for Murder * Bruno Fischer (ss) A Mate for Murder and Other Stories from the Pulps ed. Gary Lovisi, Gryphon Books 1992 (the magazine[s] the stories were sold to folded before scheduled publication in the 1940s, and Lovisi published a slim original-publication collection of them)
65 * The Day After Tomorrow * Charles Ardai (vi) Kwik Krimes ed. Otto Penzler, Thomas & Mercer, 2013, as by Richard Aleas87 * Goin’ West * Charles Ardai (nv) Show Business Is Murder ed. Stuart M. Kaminsky, Berkley Prime Crime, 2004117 * The Shadow Line * Charles Ardai (ss) Beat to a Pulp, Round 2 ed. David Cranmer & Matthew P. Mayo, Beat to a Pulp, 2012131 * Nobody Wins * Charles Ardai (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine mid December 1993179 * The Deadly Embrace * Charles Ardai (ss) Truth, Justice and..., edited by Thomas Deja, 2004 ebook203 * Don't Be Cruel * Charles Ardai (ss) Down These Dark Streets, edited by Thomas Deja, 2003 ebook243 * The Fall of Man * Charles Ardai (ss) Gone, edited by Stephen J. Golds, Red Dog Press (UK) 2022251 * Fathers and Sons * Charles Ardai (ss) Damn Near Dead: An Anthology of Geezer Noir ed. Duane Swierczynski, Busted Flush Press, 2006259 * Sleep! Sleep! Beauty Bright * Charles Ardai (ss) Black Is the Night ed. Maxim Jakubowski, Titan, 2022285 * Masks * Charles Ardai (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine October 1993319 * Secret Service * Charles Ardai (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine September/ October 2002327 * A Bar Called Charley’s * Charles Ardai (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine November 1990345 * A Free Man * Charles Ardai (ss) BEAT to a PULP, Round 1 edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash (BEAT to a PULP, 2010)363 * The Investigation of Things * Charles Ardai (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine February 1991
Fiction reviews, long delayed, to follow. Thanks to Charles Ardai, Gregory Shepard and Patricia Abbott for help with bibliographic information. TM
And, to add to the indices here, here's the trade paperback version of BEAT to a PULP, Round 1, the 2010 anthology drawn mostly, apparently, from stories first published by the BEAT to a PULP online magazine.
BEAT to a PULP, Round 1 edited by David Cranmer and Elaine Ash (BEAT to a PULP, 2010), xiv+396pp, ISBN-13: 978-0615388243, cover illustration by James O'Barr (BtaP 20XX indicates the year the story was featured on the webzine)
xi * Introduction * David Cranmer * in
Fairbanks, Alaska flood, August 1967
Cushman Street turned into a waterway during the 1967 flood, with people traveling by canoe and motorboat in waters 3 or 4 feet deep. (Fairbanks Daily News-Miner Collection)
A week or so after my third birthday. (My parents had met and married in Fairbanks in 1963. We lived there until early 1969.)
Wikipedia:
Flood
[edit]Fairbanks Area
[edit]The flood was the worst disaster in Fairbanks' history. Roughly 95% of Fairbanks was flooded, and the flood water's depth reached a maximum of 5 feet.[2] Nearly every house received water damage, and there was at least an inch of brown mud on every submerged surface. The cost of damage in Fairbanks alone was estimated to be $85 million.[2][4]
The Richardson Highway was washed out near Salcha for about half a mile.[2]
Tuesday, January 21, 2025
January Music on MLK, Jr. Day and Afterward
Fotheringay, featuring Sandy Denny: "Banks of the Nile" from Fotheringay (Island Records, 1970)
Brian Arnold: Wonder Woman Season 1 opening credits
Jayme Lynn Blaschke: Friday Night Videos (occasional)
James Cameron: Sam Moore, RIP: Sam & Dave: "Hold On"; Brenton Wood, RIP: "The Ooogum Boogum Song" and "Gimme Little Sign"; Garth Hudson, RIP: The Band: "Up on Cripple Creek" (The Ed Sullivan Show, 1969); composer and saxophonist Don Nix, RIP: Freddie King: "Going Down"; The Mar-Keys: "Last Night"
Rick Covert: Nina M. DiGregorio; "Comfortably Numb"; Daily Rock History
Jeff Gemmill: On Music, Memories and Nostalgia; Lucy Kaplansky: The Lucy Story, 1976-2023 (LucyKaplansky.com, 2024); Sara Bug: "Back in Nashville (Take 2)" (2025); Hardwicke Circus: Cumbria Pizza (Alternative Facts, 2024); Diane Coll: Up From the Mud (CD Baby, 2024); Camille Schmidt: Nude #9 (Six Castle Road, 2025); much more.
Ted Gioia: 6 (of 16) Videos I'm Watching This Week
Michael A. Gonzales: Radiohead: "The National Anthem" (on Later with Jools Holland, 2001)
Jerry House: Sandy Denny; Slim Whitman; Hymn Time [weekly]
Jackie Kashian interviews Allen Strickland Williams about They Might Be Giants, the band
George Kelley: Joni Mitchell: Archives, Volume Four: The Asylum Records Years (1976-80): Dua Lipa and Sabrina Carpenter concert videos; Heartbreak is the National Anthem: How Taylor Swift Reinvented Pop Music by Rob Sheffield; Decade of Music V.1-3 (Sony, 1992); Lost and Found in the Seventies (Capitol, 2004); Prom Night: This Magic Moment (Time/Life, 2008); A Complete Unknown (2024 film); Joan Osborne: Breakfast in Bed (Time/Life 2007); Clinton Heylin: Bob Dylan: Behind the Shades Revisited (2021) and The Double Life of Bob Dylan: 1941-66; The Last Five Years: A Musical
Kate Laity: Jean-Jacques Perrey and Gershon Kingsley: The In Sound From Way Out! (Vanguard, 1966); Witch Songs
D. F. Lewis: Petersen Quartet: César Franck: String Quartet in D major; BBC Symphony Orchestra: Elliott Carter: Symphonia: "Sum fluxae pretium spei"
Steve Lewis: Marianne Faithful: "As Tears Go By"
Barry N. Malzberg (in 2024): Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 in D Minor; Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti; Bruckner: Symphony No. 6: Frankfort Radio Symphony conducted by Christoph Eschenbach
Todd Mason: "She's Not There": the original record and an array of cover versions; 8 (+1) Examples of Trombonists in Action (for Jackie Kashian and THE DORK FORESTers); Arooj Aftab & Her Band: "Raat Ki Rani", The Late Show (CBS, 10 December 2024); The American Folk Scene ed. David DeTurk & A. Poulin Jr.; Bob Dylan: Don't Look Back transcribed & edited by D.J. Pennebaker et al.; Dangerously Funny [the Smothers Bros.] by David Bianculli