Short, Not Always Sweet

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

A mystery novel can be like a leisurely seven-course dinner, while a short story is more like a quick snack. Of course, sometimes that long, long dinner can be as stomach-churning as watching James Carville attempt to be endearing, while that little lunch can be as satisfying as overhearing two people talking about your irresistible sexual magnetism.


In the world of so-called literary fiction, it has become quite common in recent years to find that an author’s first book is a collection of short stories. The old publishing cliche about the limited appeal of short stories seems, happily, to have been exposed as one of those bits of knowledge that is as wise as slapping Mike Tyson across the mouth and calling him a girlie man to see if he’s really that tough.


A writer of whom you have probably not heard is David Means, who has just published “The Secret Goldfish” (Fourth Estate, 211 pages, $22.95), a collection of dark stories, mostly about crime, that is stunning in its originality. The dust jacket flap describes them as funny, so it is only fair to confess that I must suddenly have become as humor challenged as an Iranian mullah.


In “Sault Ste. Marie,” for example, a story is told of an angelic beauty who hooks up with a drug dealer, with poor results. “She just got more and more beautiful until eventually (he) couldn’t stand the gentleness in her eyes and, maybe to try to change things around, he started to beat her face like a punching bag,” Mr. Means writes. “One afternoon, under the influence of his own product, he had a couple of friends hold her down while he struck her face with a meat pounder, just hammered it, until she was close to death maybe actually dead.”


After laughing at this until my sides hurt, I continued to read this sad tale of bored young people who commit atrocities more for the sake of something to do rather than malevolence – a theme repeated in several of these haunting stories. In “Michigan Death Trip,” young people whose major accomplishment in life seems to be the ability to ingest virtually any kind of drug without dying find yet another way to combat the tediousness of life in the Midwest. “Earlier that evening they went on a rampage to the fish hatchery, dumped yellow cartons of rat poison into a holding tank, and waited for the fish to float to the top, which they did, turning wide-eyed, betrayed, on their sides until the top of the tank in the soft gentle starlight was a sequined quilt of dead scales.”


Mr. Means has won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and had one of the stories in this stunning collection, “Carnie,” selected for “Best American Mystery Stories 2001.” In spite of all that knee-slapping humor in “The Secret Goldfish,” however, he has inexplicably failed to snag a job writing sitcoms.


A very different sort of collection, an anthology to be more precise, is “Show Business Is Murder” (Berkley, 371 pages, $23.95), edited by Stuart M. Kaminsky. Mr. Kaminsky has written 56 books and 40 short stories, and I have to wonder why he thinks he needs the middle initial; to distinguish him from some other Stuart Kaminsky? Anyway, these are all original stories (well, original in the sense that they haven’t been published previously) on the theme of … okay, you get it.


What makes this worthy of notice is that it is presented by the Mystery Writers of America, which means that the organization actually pressured 20 of its members to write stories for its annual collection. There is not a single distinguished piece of fiction here, but all are professional and kind of pleasant. If you have a soft spot for Elvis impersonators, vaudeville, Vegas, movies, and all that jazz, you may enjoy this.


An absolutely first-rate anthology and great value for the money is “A Moment on the Edge” (HarperCollins, 540 pages, $24.95), edited by the distinguished mystery writer Elizabeth George. Subtitled “100 Years of Crime Stories by Women” (though only 84 years are covered), it reprints several familiar tales, including one of the dozen greatest mystery stories of all time, Susan Glaspell’s often-anthologized “A Jury of Her Peers.”


Authors represented include some of the great names, like Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Shirley Jackson, and Margery Allingham, and some authors who may be new to all but the most dedicated reader of crime fiction – Wendy Hornsby, Gillian Linscott, Kristine Kathryn Rusch. There is a wonderful story by Joyce Carol Oates (99% of all anthologies published during the past quarter-century have a story by the indefatigable Ms. Oates), and a splendid short-short by Minette Walters. But one of the prizes of this smorgasbord of sin is “Clever and Quick” by one of the greats of British mystery fiction, the sadly neglected Christianna Brand.


Here, as she is so brilliantly capable of doing (notably in the novel “Green for Danger,” which was adapted for the movies so well that movie critic William K. Everson called it the greatest British B-picture ever made), she piles twist upon twist for an ending worthy of the best of Agatha Christie – who is, alas, missing from the roster of stars in “A Moment On the Edge.” Also noteworthy is the lengthy and informative introduction by Ms. George. This is no slapdash page or two from this accomplished perfectionist, but a thoughtful and intelligent paean to crime fiction, which sets the table nicely for the varied array of treats that follow.


By George, I really like this book!



Mr.Penzler is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop in Manhattan and the series editor of the annual “Best American Mystery Stories.” He can be reached at openzler@nysun.com.


The New York Sun

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