Stewart Brown - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 140, No. 6. Whole No. 856, December 2012

Max Allan Collins, Triple Play: A Nathan Heller Casebook, Thomas and Mercer, $14.95. In his introduction to this collection of three of his novellas, Collins discusses the short novel and its place in detective-fiction history. He rightfully mentions that it was once not uncommon to find a 40,000 to 50,000 word “novel” published in Manhunt, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, or EQMM. Collins has gathered three such novellas, in the style of Rex Stout, featuring P.I. Nathan Heller, each set amidst actual crime cases from the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s.

Collins has also teamed up with James L. Traylor to produce Mickey Spillane on Screen (McFarland www.mcfarlandpub.com, $45.00), which chronicles the many film and TV adaptations of Spillane’s work, in-cluding details on the cast and crew, episode guides to four different Mike Hammer TV series, and multiple TV movies. The book, throughout, is filled with black-and-white photos.

Finally, I couldn’t let another column go by without making mention of a collection of stories by one of our favorite EQMM contributors, Melodie Johnson Howe. Shooting Hollywood (Crippen & Landru, $43.00 HC/$17.00 TPB), contains nine stories about aging starlet Diana Poole, eight of which originally appeared in EQMM.

Copyright © 2012 by Steve Steinbock

David Dean’s July 2011 EQMM story “Tomorrow’s Dead” received nominations for the Edgar Allan Poe and Derringer awards. He joins us this month with a less hardboiled story, but one whose characters may make you think twice next time you see an apparently innocent little girl riding her bike around your cul-de-sac. The author is a former chief of police who recently retired to spend more time writing. We have several more of his powerful stories scheduled for 2013.

The neighbor watched Mariel approach through his partially shuttered blinds. She cruised down their quiet cul-de-sac on her purple bicycle, her large head with its jumble of tight curls swiveling from side to side. He thought she looked grotesque, a Shirley Temple on steroids. Mariel ratcheted the bell affixed to her handlebars for no apparent reason and stopped in front of his house. He took a step back from the window.

His house was one of three that lay along the turnaround at the end of Crumpler Lane and normally she would simply complete her circumnavigation of the asphalted circle and return to her end of the street. This time, however, Mariel’s piggish eyes swept across his lawn and continued to the space between his house and that of his neighbors to the north, who despised the child as much as he did, if that was possible. A crease of concern appeared on his freckled forehead and he took a sip of his cooling coffee.

Suddenly she raked the lever of her bell back and forth several times, startling him, the nerve-wracking jangle sounding as if Mariel and her bike were in his living room. He felt something warm slide over his knuckles and drip onto his faux Persian carpet.

Hissing a curse about Mariel’s parentage, he turned for the kitchen and a bottle of stain remover. “Hideous child,” he murmured through clenched teeth. “Troglodyte!” What was she looking for? More than once he had chased her from his property after he found her snooping around his sheds and peering in his windows. Though he had complained, her mother had proved useless in controlling the child. She was one of those “single moms” that seemed to dominate the family landscape of late, and had made it clear that she thought he was overreacting.

He recalled, with a flushing of his freshly razored cheeks, how she had appeared amused by the whole thing and inquired with an arched brow how long he had been divorced — as if the need for companionship might be the real motive behind his visit! He felt certain that on more than one encounter with the gargantuan and supremely disengaged mother, he had smelled alcohol on her breath, cheap wine, if he had to hazard a guess.

But what now, he wondered? Usually Mariel crept about in a surprisingly stealthy manner for such a large girl, but now she commanded the street like a general, silent but for the grating bell that even now rang out demandingly once more... but for what?

Forgetting the carpet cleaner, he set down his morning mug and glided stealthily back to his observation point at the window. He felt trapped, somehow, by this sly little giant so inappropriately named “Mariel.” What had her mother been thinking, he asked himself with a shake of his graying head, to assign this clumsy-looking creature such a delicate, feminine name? When he peeked out again it was to find Mariel’s bike lying discarded on his lawn, the girl nowhere to be seen. The crease between his eyes became a furrow and he rushed through his silent house to the kitchen windows.

Carefully parting a slat of his Venetian blinds, he looked out on the path that led between his property and the next and on into the woods. A large head of curly hair was just disappearing down it and into the trees. A shudder ran through his body and beads of sweat formed above his upper lip like dew. Damn the girl, he thought, feeling slightly nauseous as suspicion uncoiled itself within his now-queasy guts.

Unbidden, the image of the dog trotted into his mind, its hideous prize clasped between its slavering jaws. It had reeked of the rancid earth exposed by the recent torrential rains. He remembered with a shudder of distaste and a rising, renewable fury how it had danced back and forth across his sodden lawn, clearly enjoying its game of “keep away.” He remembered the shovel most of all, its heft and reach, the satisfaction of its use.

“That was her dog,” he breathed into the silent, waiting room, then thought, Of course it was... it would be. His soft hands flexed as if gripping the shovel once more.

Mariel stood over the shallow, hastily dug grave and contemplated the partially exposed paw. The limb showed cinnamon-colored fur with black, tigerish stripes that she immediately recognized. She hadn’t really cared for Ripper (a name he had been awarded as a puppy denoting his penchant for ripping any and every thing he could seize between his formidable jaws) but he had been, ostensibly, her dog.

Ostensibly, because as he had grown larger, his destructive capabilities, coupled with Mariel and her mother’s complete disregard of attempting to instill anything remotely resembling discipline, had resulted in a rather dangerous beast that had to be kept penned in the backyard at all times. Mariel had served largely as Ripper’s jailer.

As she couldn’t really share any affection with the dog, or he with her, they had gradually grown to regard one another with a resigned antipathy, if not outright hostility — after all, she was also the provider of his daily meals, which she mostly remembered to deliver. It was also she who managed to locate him on those occasions when he found the gate to his pen unlatched (Mariel did this from time to time to see what might happen in the neighborhood as a result) and coaxed him into returning. This was the mission on which Mariel had been engaged this Saturday morning in early November. She saw now that she had been only partially successful — Ripper would not be returning to his pen.

Looking about for something to scrape the loose earth off her dog’s remains, she pried a rotting piece of wood from a long-fallen pine tree and began to dig into the damp, sandy soil. Grunting and sweating with the effort, her Medusa-like curls bouncing on her large, round skull, she managed to expose Ripper within minutes. Whoever had buried him had not done a very good job of it and the slight stench of dead dog that had first led her to the secret grave rose like an accusing, invisible wraith. Mariel wrinkled her stubby nose.