Delights, Expected and Unexpected

In the last couple of weeks I've run across a few delightful surprises, or had them recommended to me.  I'd like to share some here.

 What you see here is the cover of a collection of short stories by Charlotte Armstrong, long a favorite of mine.  This collection came up in conversation when a colleague of mine declared with sheer conviction: "The Albatross contains the single most suspenseful story ever written."  Hyperbole always make me take notice, so I hunted around on the Net and found a copy of the hardcover.  (The book pictured at right includes only the novella titled "The Albatross," and not the other stories.)  My colleague refused to tell me which story she was referring to and said I would know it when I saw it.  At first I thought it might be "Laugh It Off," which is quite superb and way, way ahead of its time.  But that wasn't it.  It's the last story in the book, "Ride with the Executioner," in which a young woman finds herself locked in a car with a man who wants to kill her but is unaware of her identity.  Absolutely chilling and just about the most perfect example of a suspense story I have ever encountered.  If you can find the story anywhere, I suggest you drop everything to read it. 

No surprises here--every issue of Mystery Scene is a pleasure.  What I admire so much about this magazine is its willingness to define its community in a large and big-hearted way.  Of course, as an editor at an independent press, I always appreciate the attention Mystery Scene gives to books and writers not necessarily published by the "big boys."  But what makes the magazine special is the way it has something for everyone, whether writer or reader, devoted mystery lover or just occasional mystery reader.  I wish more doctors would order it for their offices--it would not only help increase the magazine's circulation (which it so obviously deserves), it would also make mystery more of a talking point in more places. 

Every so often you hear about a book through the grapevine and you think, "Oh, that sounds pretty good, I'll have to pick it up and see what it's all about."  That was my experience with C. Solimini's Across the River, a witty yet surprisingly emotional tale of a tabloid reporter sent back to her home town to report on a murder that is reminiscent of the Jon Benet Ramsey case.  I always appreciate a well-executed plot, but Across the River has a lot more than that.  It also has heart, as well as a memorable narrator, Andrealisa Rinaldi, who makes many of her kind (you know, the sassy but sensitive narrator with the heart of gold) pale in comparison.  Hell, even the cover is good.  I thoroughly enjoyed this one and look forward to more by Solimini.

Enjoying some of Charlotte Armstrong's short fiction put me in the mood for some other superb brief mystery fiction, which took me back to Christie's Witness for the Prosecution.  My admiration for Christie is boundless--the ingenuity of Ten Little Indians, the audacity of Roger Ackroyd,  the sheer trickery of Murder on the Orient Express.   But it's Witness for the Prosecution that truly awes me, not only with its twists but also with the psychological insight on which it is built.  I really do see it is as the progenitor for the modern psychological novel of suspense, and occasionally I like to go back to it just to bask in its glow. 

Comments

[Cheryl Solimini]

Thank you for your kind words!
Cheryl Solimini