Small Felonies - Fifty Mystery Short Stories

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STORY COLLECTIONS:

Case File

Night Freight

Oddments

Scenarios

Sleuths

NON-FICTION:

Gun in Cheek: An Affectionate Guide to the Worst in Mystery Fiction

Son of Gun in Cheek

STORY COLLECTIONS:

Carmody's Run

More Oddments

On Account of Darkness

Problems Solved

Small Felonies

Spadework

Stacked Deck

Westerns:

Border Fever

Day of the Moon

Duel at Gold Buttes

Gallows Land

Starvation Camp

Non Fiction:

Son of Gun in Cheek

Sixgun in Cheek

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Preface

A Cold Foggy Day

A Dip in the Poole

Something Wrong (A "Nameless Detective" Story)

The Imperfect Crime

Shell Game (with Jeffrey M. Wallmann)

Sweet Fever

Perfect Timing

Dear Poisoner

Thirst

Skeletons

The Same Old Grind

His Name Was Legion

The Dispatching of George Ferris

Little Lamb

Once a Thief (with Jeffrey M. Wallmann)

Under the Skin

Changes

The Storm Tunnel

Defect

The Clincher

The Facsimile Shop (with Jeffrey M. Wallmann)

Waiting, Waiting . . .

Peekaboo

Words Do Not A Book Make

Incident in a Neighborhood Tavern (A "Nameless Detective" Story)

The Terrarium Principle

On Guard! (with Michael Kurland)

Memento Mori

A Little Larceny

Mrs. Rakubian

Toy

House Call (with Jeffrey M. Wallmann)

Deathwatch

Outrageous

Muggers' Moon

Hero (A Tale of the Old West)

The Man Who Collected "The Shadow"

For Love

Unchained

Tiger, Tiger (with John Lutz)

Here Lies Another Blackmailer

Buttermilk

Retirement

One of Those Days

Don't Spend It All in One Place

Cache and Carry (A "Nameless Detective"/Sharon McCone Story, with Marcia Muller)

The Killing

Black Wind

A Case for Quiet (with Jeffrey M. Wallmann)

Whodunit

T
he short-short story is both a difficult and an atrophying literary form. One fact may explain the other: because it isn't easy to concoct a story of two thousand words or less that has a credible plot, deft characterization, suspense, and a strong climactic effect, many writers tend to steer clear of that length. Many editors, too—though in the few remaining markets for short genre fiction, good vignettes are still welcome.

Personally, I've always admired the short-short. I find conceiving and writing them to be pleasurable, challenging, stimulating. They're over and done with quickly, too. Novels take months to write. You can turn out a finished short-short—the first draft of one, anyhow—in an hour or two. Immediate sense of accomplishment, instant gratification.

I've published close to a hundred vignettes in the past twenty years, in a variety of categories—about the same number (though not, alas, of the same uniform quality) as the master of the category short-short, Fredric Brown. Most of mine, unlike most of Brown's, happen to be in the mystery/suspense field. And that is what led me to the idea for this book.

So far as I know there are only five other single-author collections composed mostly or entirely of popular short-shorts at least some of which are criminous. All fifty-three entries in Octavus Roy Cohen's
Cameos
(1931) are vignettes—mainly of the slice-of-life, slick-magazine variety—but less than a score ideal with mystery themes. William MacHarg's 1940 collection,
The Affairs of O'Malley
(reprinted in paperback as
Smart Guy
), contains thirty-three detective tales featuring the tough homicide cop; many are two thousand words or less, but several others are longer. Two superb collections by Gerald Kersh, published only in England, are loaded with short-shorts: thirty-two of thirty-seven stories in
Neither Man Nor Dog
(1946), thirty-one of thirty-five stories in
Sad Road to the Sea
(1947); there are only a few crime tales in each volume, however, and all entries are a remarkable, oddball fusion of the literary story and the genre story, spiced with elements of fantasy, horror, and dark humor. Fewer than half of the forty-seven stories in Fredric Brown's likewise superb
Nightmares and Geezenstacks
(1961) can be classified as crime fiction, and of those, one is five thousand words; the rest are mordant fantasies and science fiction, most but not all of vignette length.

Small Felonies
, therefore, is the first single-author collection of exclusively short-short—none is longer than two thousand words—and exclusively criminous stories. I make note of this fact with what I hope is pardonable pride. To have a first of any kind in the mystery field is a rare treat.

For the most part, the stories in these pages originally appeared in
Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine
, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, and
Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine
between 1968 and 1981. Others were first published in such long-defunct periodicals as
Mystery Magazine
and
Charlie Chan Mystery Magazine
, and in a variety of anthologies. Eight are originals. And there are eight collaborations, five with Jeffrey M. Wallmann and one each with John Lutz, Michael Kurland, and Marcia Muller. A fair number of the reprints, in particular those written and first published early in my career, have been revised to one extent or another, to correct all manner of youthful sins and excesses. Rereading one's early stories can be a very humbling experience.

If I may be permitted to coin a collective noun, what you are about to read is a "slumgullion of short-shorts." Lots of disparate ingredients mixed together in the same kettle. Upbeat stories, downbeat stories, offbeat stories. Detection, ratiocination, impossible crime, psychological suspense, satire, farce, horror, light fantasy, apocalyptic fantasy, lady-or-the-tiger dilemmas, the cautionary tale, the biter-bitten, the O. Henry twist, the exercise in reductio ad absurdum—even a humorous look at Russian spies (sort of), a shameless "thing" composed mostly of puns, and my candidate for the shortest murder mystery ever written. Plus three brief adventures of the "Nameless Detective," among them a locked-room mystery and a "Nameless"/Sharon McCone collaboration with Marcia Muller told entirely through dialogue. The settings range from San Francisco to New England, Mexico to Montana, the north of England to the Mediterranean island of Majorca. And the styles run the gamut from the Hemingwayesque to Wodehousian whimsy.