Five stories have been nominated for the Edgar Award in the category of best short story from the Mystery Writers of America. In my previous post, I wrote about where you can purchase the magazine issue or anthology.
In this post, I am writing about my impressions from reading them.
Here is a list of the stories.
"The Summer Uncle Cat Came to Stay," Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine by Leslie Elman (Dell Magazines) January/February 2020 issue.
"Etta at the End of the World," Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine by Joseph S. Walker (Dell Magazines) May/June 2020 issue.
"The Twenty-Five Year Engagement," In League with Sherlock Holmes by James W. Ziskin (Pegasus Books – Pegasus Crime)
"Fearless," California Schemin' by Walter Mosley (Wildside Press)
"Dust, Ash, Flight," Addis Ababa Noir by Maaza Mengiste (Akashic Books)
Each of the five nominated stories has a very different feel.
The first story I read is the "The Summer Uncle Cat
Came to Stay," by Leslie Elman. This is a tale told through a child's
memory, with the crime just outside of the peripheral vision. The writing
strikes the perfect tone for the story.
With "Etta at the End of the World," by Joseph Walker,
a woman is on the run from killing her abusive husband encounters a woman with an abusive boyfriend.
The story has both a modern and old school feel to it, classic
Hitchcock. It has that transgressive feeling of a Stanley Ellin tale.
"The
Twenty-Five Year Engagement," by James Ziskin is the verisimilitude of a
Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes tale. As a minor Sherlockian scholar (I've had one
article published in The Baker Street Journal), it was joyous to see the
attention to detail, and lack of modernization. This fits in with the canon. One tiny
quibble, I wish it was referred to as an "adventure" rather than a "case." Almost all of the canon are adventures.
"Fearless," by Walter Mosely, is pure poetry. Paris meets up with his old friend Fearless. He needs a partner to help steal the singing contract of femme fatale, Deletha.
The writing is classic noir, spoken in jazz. "As they advanced, I could feel the darkness of the street settle around me; I was like a bug when the great shadow of a foot comes over him."
The last short story I read. . . hoo boy. "Dust, Ash, Flight," by Maaza Mengiste, is simply one of the most powerful stories I've read of any
genre. Set in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a photographer is documenting the excavation of a 70s massacre site ". . . another place of unclaimed sorrow." A
man is hoping to learn whether his son was one of the victims. The photographer
recalls past atrocities that he documented.
The story draws clear parallels between bones of the victims
and the destruction of those who survive, they are "documenting pieces of
what were whole men." A singer who lost his son at the time of the massacre was conscripted by the killers to sing funeral dirges/
I hold stories of real-life tragedies to a high standard. It
is easy to get the pay-off through the gravity of the event. Not so in this tale.
My only complaint is that the story is too heavy, too unflinching.
In the 80s, I worked as a social worker just down the hall from refugee resettlement program. We had many Ethiopian refugees passing through. Remembering them and their fears provided this story with an extra punch.
Update: Dust, Ash, Flight won. All these stories were worthy in most any given year, but in my opinion, the best story won.
My vote.
By the standard of elegant writing, I'd give the nod to Mosely.
Going by the standard of the story with the most impact, I'd choose Mengiste,
which is also pretty darn flawless in its execution.
Martin Hill Ortiz is a Professor of Pharmacology at Ponce Health Sciences University and has researched HIV for over thirty years. He is the author of four novels and numerous short stories and poems.
