Murder Mayhem Short Stories

 

Murder Mayhem Short Stories by Christopher P. Semtner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This . . . behemoth was bequeathed to me by my daughter a couple of Christmases ago. After staring at its metallic cover for far too long, I finally took the plunge and began reading it eight months ago. I'm a slow reader, and I did a lot of other reading at the same time, so it's no surprise that it took me this long to get through this beast.

I was tempted to use the word "Leviathan" instead of "behemoth" above, but I co-edited Leviathan 3, so that would be confusing to say the least. After editing Leviathan 3, we had several reviewers who lazily defaulted to the age old "wisdom" that short fiction anthologies are, by their very nature, "uneven". I'll argue to my dying day that Lev 3 was anything but uneven. We loved these stories and were excited for each one of them to see publication, else they wouldn't have been included in the collection (and it wouldn't have won a World Fantasy Award, I believe).

Alas, sometimes the pundits are right. It's a rare thing when I find a short fiction anthology that doesn't have at least one disappointing story in it. Sacrum Regnum I and Sacrum Regnum II jump to mind as anthologies that are near perfect. But such gems are rare.

Murder Mayhem Short Stories is not one of those gems. But it's not terrible, either. It is, in reality, quite uneven. It does show that many stories that are considered "classics" are classics for a reason. Even after many years and many readings, they still shine. There were a few offerings here by "classic" authors that didn't appeal to me, but there are some amazing stories here, as well. On the contemporary front, however, I have to say that the level of literary worth was much, much lower, on average, than those of the "classics". It should go without saying, but I'm saying it anyway.

Here are my notes about each story. I'm sure I'll slay some sacred cows here, and some will consider my opinions dross. Those are the dangers of reviewing such an eclectic bunch of stories (although they all do center, more or less, around the theme of murder). So here are my notes (possibly slightly modified since I've had time to meditate on them and the stories):

The first story, "The Wendigo Goes Home," by Sara Dobie Bauer was, well, "meh". It's a fine story, but nothing all that original, if I'm being honest. Dialogue was fine, but characterization might have been a little stronger if the story had a little breathing room.

I think that "The Death of Halpin Fraser" is the first Ambrose Bierce story I've ever read. Though the dialogue is dated and a bit stilted, this was a solid story of madness and murder. For some reason I'm reminded of True Detective season one, though the cosmic horror here is only implied. It's a good little spooky outing, and I'd like to read more Bierce, which is a good thing because the next tale is also his.

Bierce's "The Moonlit Road" may be one of the most depressing short stories I have ever read. The clever use of a transcription from a medium gives us the ghost's perspective of events (after those of the innocent son and guilty husband are presented). The ghost's recounting is the most tragic of all. Bierce successfully subverts our expectations in an emotionally-impactful way.

Take Shakespeare's"Comedy of Errors," remove all the funny bits and replace then with tragedy, but keep all the elements of mistaken identity, and you essentially get Steen Steensen Blicher's "The Rector of Veilbye," though not half as clever as The Bard.

Michael Cebula's "Funeral" is very clearly not my kind of story. Revenge stories are not my thing, especially when the revenge is precipitated by child abuse. Just no.

At first, I thought the narrator of "Into the Blue" suffered a debilitating kind of synasthesia, but in time I figured out that Carolyn Charron was using colors for great thematic effect. A good story, only slightly too-much "on the nose," but not enough to throw the story off.

G.K. Chesterton's "Dr. Hyde, Detective, and the White Pillars Murder" might be one of the more enjoyable pieces of detective fiction I've read because it unashamedly mocks the very tropes of detective fiction in the actual dialogue between characters. The key here is subversion, and Chesterton is a master of it, flipping "the detective story" inside out, exposing all of its weaknesses; makeing a great story of it.

Wilkie Collin's "The Traveller's Story of a Terribly Strange Bed" might win the prize for weirdest title, but the story is exactly what it says it is "on the tin," so to speak. It's a little corny, but clever.

"Who Killed Zebedee?", another Wilkie Collins story, was . . . not terribly thrilling. It's a middling tale of murder with a not-very-suprising culprit.

Dickens being Dickens in his story "The Trial for Murder" slowly builds what becomes a sustained narrative about justice from the grave. The dead have much more influence than we might think on the proceedings of this life. The building dread sustains for a long time under Dicken's adept hand, but the twist of the pen at the end takes this story to the next level.

Dick Donovan, in "The Problem of Dead Wood Hall," proved decisively that an indecisive outcome is sometimes more interesting than a case that is neatly tied-up with an evidentiary ribbon. To quote Deep Purple "It's not the kill, it's the thrill of the chase". Satisfaction might be demanded, but the lack of full deliverance is a sort of deliverance itself.

James Dorr's "Mr. Happy Head" is a surreal tale of suffering, cruelty, and possession. The prose is intentionally simple and thus impactful. This is a disturbing tale that will have you reading between the lines to know exactly what horrific things are happening or have happened (it's difficult to tell which). Time and space and memory and acts slip and slide over each other, often greased by blood.

While easily predictable, th plot of Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Brazilian Cat" was satisfying. Yes, there distant rings of the Holme's stories, but that has to do with Doyle's writing style instead of anything that can be directly or indirectly associated with Sherlock. Besides, the crime scene was far too messy for the great detective to stoop to investigate this open and shut case.

Tim Foley's "Nineteen Sixty-Five Ford Falcon" is as creepy for its sales-pitchy narrator as for the story itself. An intriguing story, but not a very satisfying read.

"Mama Said" was far too simple with a telegraphed ending that did not surprise or satisfy at all. I appreciate the effort Steven Thor Gunnin put into getting inside the narrator's head, but I found it all so hackneyed. A forgettable story, sorry.

I'm still trying to figure out why Kate Heartfield's "Six Aspects of Cath Baduma" is included in this book. It's a fine high-fantasy story. Yes, it's gory and grim, but it just doesn't fit in anywhere here. Maybe the editors wanted to show "breadth" in the stories, but this is way out in left field. Still a decent story.

William Hope Hodgson's tale "The House Among the Laurels" is a short story about his famous detective Carnacki. It is an outstanding tale that keeps one on the edge of one's seat. I love this sort of "Occult Detective" narrative, complete with pentagrams, candles, and ghost-hunting equipment. I would gladly read a book full of these tales.

Another Hodgson story, "The Thing Invisible" sees Carnacki blindly searching in the dark for a ghost in a chapel and exercising his mind by way of . . . engineering?

At the beginning, I expected David M. Hoenig's "Freedom is Not Free" to turn into a Blade Runner pastiche. But Hoenig's plot twists took this in a different enough direction that it wasn't just a cyber-noir copycat. I really enjoyed this piece and it deserves to be considered on its own merits, which are high in my eyes. By the way, if you've even wonderd what the pineal gland is for . . . well, you'll see.

ETA Hoffman's "Mademoiselle de Scuderi" is, essentially, a disney princess story of a poor girl and her wrongly-accused lover escape the clutches of a well-meaning, but ruthless judge, by appeal to the king through Mademoiselle de Scuderi. It's complicated. And well written, if a little over-wrought and even more archaic than Hoffman's other stories (those I've read, at least). Still a good mystery.

Liam Hogan's "How to Build a Mass Murderer" is clever. It's got an interesting twist or two, but it didn't strike me as anything spectacular. Color me jaded.

Is Robert E. Howard's "Pigeons from Hell" a Conan story? It has a panther! And walking dead! And lots of gore! And . . . pigeons? No, it doesn't pass the Conan test, but it is a fantastic and horrific pulp read. There were some nice twists that balked at predictability. And he takes some not-so-subtle pot-shots at Lovecraft, which was funny (to me).

"The Two-Out-of-Three-Rule," by Patrick J. Hurley is a reminder that if something seems too good to be true, it is. I have to admit I hooked into this story about a bunch of roleplaying nerds pretty quickly. It was a good tale, solidly told, with some defiance of expectations. It wasn't a vampire story, which I thought at first. It's worse than that.

I could see the ending of "The Well" from ten miles away, but that still didn't spoil W.W. Jacobs' handling of a well-told tale (pun intended) that read like something straight out of a pulp-horror comic.

At first, while reading Franz Kafka's "In the Penal Colony," I thought "this may be the most boring, tedious Kafka story I've ever read". Thankfully, about 3/4ths of the way through, things got really, really interesting and increasingly horrific. The staid and true bureacracy as mental/emotional torture gave way to physical body horror, which suited me just fine.

I really enjoyed "Getting Shot in the Face Still Stings" by Michelle Ann King. It's a tale about time, persistence, and the patience of an angel. No, wait, the patience of a demon. I really enjoyed this snappy little story.

As colonial and condescending as ever, Rudyard Kipling delivers a simple tale in "The Return of Imray". A classic case of Orientalism, but still a good read.

"Shared Loss" by Gerri Leen just wasn't my kind of story. "Slight" is the word I'll use for it. Not my cup of tea.

I've read a lot of Lovecraft, including the present story, "The Hound". I know what's coming. And I know and am annoyed by how Lovecraft contradicts himself in the same text. But there's just something about his writing that "rings," that isn't apparent on the page. The writing no longer amazes me as it did when I was young, but it still "rings".

I have a soft (and invisible and squishy) spot for Lovecraft's "From Beyond". Bizarre as it is, and despite the mad ravings of Tillinghast (nice name, by the way), Lovecraft shows more restraint here than in other stories, and I think the story is stronger because of it.

K.A. Mielke's "Drive Safe" is just short of predictable. It's an okay story, but is kind of buried in the immensity of this collection. Maybe this book is too big for it's britches?

Edith Nesbit's "In the Dark" is chilling, a somber tale. Nesbit sets the tale up wonderfully with the opening paragraph (too long to share in this update). It's an entrancing riddle that unfolds in such a way that one is still left puzzled at the end. An aickmanesque story of the highest calendar, and I can't give any praise greater than that.

The other day, my son asked "dad, what's the word for when someone walls another person up to kill them? 'Immurementing'?"

My answer, which he knew I was going to say: "Amontilladoing". We both had a good laugh at Fortunato's expense. Of course, Poe's story, a classic, gets five stars (and a lot of bricks).

Arthu B. Reeve's "The Azure Ring" combines all the disciplines of chemistry, ethnography, capitalism, law, and detective work into one fabulously boring story.

Daydream? Ghost story? Liminal magic realism? It doesn't matter. "Recreation with the Paralytics" is a numinous tale, in any case. It will lull you into its own sacral reality, chestnuts, wheelchairs, and all.

As I began to catch the cadence of Alexandra Camille Renwick's "Redux" I thought "okay, I can tell where this is going". And I could. Clearly. Thing is, it was a tight story, so there's that.

A suicidal skin walker? Yep, that's what we have in Fred Senes's "The First Seven Deaths of Mildred Orly". Not bad. Not great.

Robert Louis Stevenson's archaic gait in "Markheim" is clunky, to say the least. This I a tale that shows its age, as well. But the internal psychology profile of a murderer is well-realized and enough to make the reader squirm in the seat a bit.

Bram Stoker feeds the fuel for Edward Gorey in later years with his harrowing, yet somehow hilarious (to me, at least) "The Dualitists". I cringed, then laughed out loud. Am I a bad person for finding such a shock of egregious violence outrageously funny? Probably. I'll save you a seat in Hell.

Contrary to the excellent story preceding it in this collection, I just could not get into Stoker's "The Burial of the Rats". It probably "just me," but I never felt fully engaged with the story.

"Mister Ted" by Donald Jacob Uivlugt uses a tried and trite trope: the evil toy that commits murder. It's an old tale, gone thin by this time in western cultural history. But Uivlugt does a nice job of exploring the evolution of the protagonist's not-nice psychology.

Ethel Lina White's "Cheese" is a high watermark of neo-noir (in attitude, if not in the trappings). From beginning to end, it is sharp and powerful, twisting expectations and pulling the reader into its trap. It's a brilliant piece of fiction. Five stars. One of the best stories in this collection.

Sardonic, with a touch of grim humor, "Corpses Removed, No Questions Asked," by Dean H. Wild just didn't do it for me. Just not my thing.

Etiquette, murder, and the upending of propriety. What else would one expect from Oscar Wilde. Unsuccessful murder is the (dis)order of the day in "Lord Arthur Savile's Crime: A Study of Duty". As usual, Wilde mocks the stubbornness of the aristocracy in this grim comedy of manners that makes its point without being too blatant.

I'll admit that I rolled my eyes ten paragraphs in to "Fragments of Me". I thought "trite" and "hackneyed", which might be true. But Nemma Wollenfang does such an excellent job of tying out the emotional impact of Multiple Personality Disorder, that I ended the story truly impressed.

Tallying up everything, I count ten stories I put at "5 stars". That's a good bunch. I also have four "1 stars". You can probably see where this is heading: The average was, as you no-doubt guessed, 3 stars. I will say that the high points were high points. But the notion of short story anthologies being, on average . . . well, average, holds in this case.

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