I’m still working on Fantome Fatale. No worries — things are going well, just slower than usual. I haven’t mapped out Rowan’s exact path to solving it yet. This is unusual for me — I always know that before I start writing. This fact has caused me to think more carefully about the direction of scenes. Maybe one more week. Maybe two.
Soon, I’ll be starting the fourth story in the collection. My thought has been that my previous collection, It’s About Impossible Crime might have been too respectful and dignified. I was more interested in the story, so the writing came off more timid than I’m used to. I feel like the solutions to the three stories in the new collection are much better. They take more risks at the very least. The first two have wild locked rooms and the third has two footprint problems — one where a killer walks over hydrated lim without leaving a print and the other where a killer’s footprints are in the middle of a field, surrounded by unbroken snow.
Now, with the fourth story, I have the urge to go lurid, to go batshit crazy and just open the id like I used to. It’s a carnival horror mystery with a locked room murder and its going to be loaded with sex and violence. Manory might not be in it. He might only have a cameo. This could hurt the book’s cohesiveness (three Manory detective stories and then this), but have you ever really enjoyed something because of the cohesiveness? It doesn’t sound right, does it?
The story and title are not settled, but I’m still working on the third story, so it’s not like I’m behind or anything. I will come out with the collection this year. (January’s almost over!)
In the meantime, enjoy a passage from Fantome Fatale. I hope you’re doing well.
Rowan Manory sat in the back seat, one knee angled toward the door, his coat unbuttoned despite the cold. He smoked without hurry, the cigarette held low between his fingers, the smoke threading upward and dissolving into the stale warmth of the car.
He had only the bare facts so far. They had come to him over the telephone, disembodied and unsatisfying, but intriguing enough to bring him to Red River.
Bradley Friedman. Dead.
Inside the folly house by the river. The door sealed. Lime spread across the ground like fresh snow. One set of footprints—Friedman’s—going in.
None coming out.
Rowan exhaled and let the smoke drift toward the window. Locked rooms were never really locked; that was the first lesson worth learning. The trick was not the enclosure but the assumption—the quiet agreement between builder and observer about what counted as an entrance, and what did not.
Still, the lime complicated matters. Lime was theatrical. Deliberate. Someone had wanted the ground to testify.
Which meant the solution would not be clever for its own sake. It would be necessary.
Rowan shifted his gaze from the window to the back of Hank Terrell’s seat, noting the stiff line of the deputy’s shoulders, the way his hands held the wheel as if he expected resistance from it. Walter sat beside Hank, silent for once, his hat tipped back, his eyes on the road ahead.
Rowan crushed the cigarette out against the metal rim of the ashtray and slipped it inside. Outside, the snow thickened, blurring the edges of the town, perhaps preparing to hide Red River’s darkest secrets from the detective.
Walter turned to the back. “What are you thinking, old boy?
“I’m pondering the problem.”
“You swore you weren’t going to ponder the problem again until you saw the crime scene.”
“I’m a liar.”
Hank looked into the rearview mirror. “I must say, Mr. Manory, it’s an honor to have someone of your uh…”
“Size?” offered Walter.
“Caliber,” said Rowan.
“Fame,” said Hank. “Someone as famous as you—we’ve never had that in Red River.”
“How lovely for you.”
“The mayor he even had the floors waxed today. That floor hasn’t been waxed since…since…I don’t think it’s ever been waxed. The mayors just real excited. So am I.”
“Mr. Terrell?”
He gushed. “Call me Hank.”
“Before I have a chance to get to know your town and meet some of the people who may have been involved, perhaps you could give me your ideas about the murder of Bradley Friedman.”
“I don’t want to say anything that might make you lean one way or another. You should do your own investigation.”
“I promise you, hearing an opinion won’t damage my balance. I fall only when the evidence pushes me.”
Hank glanced sideways, then away again. His mouth flattened; he breathed out sharply through his nose. He opened his mouth, closed it, and waited a beat.
“Well,” he said at last, “I don’t know if I should be saying this. The mayor and the sheriff are leaning toward the killer wanting to stop the sale.”
“Sale?”
“Yeah, some people from your neck of the woods. MC…C…M—Mid Continental Construction or something. I don’t know. The town hall is interested in selling the clay pits and mineral rights and all sorts of other things to that company. I’m not in the know about all the details. They say it’ll mean new roads and businesses and the town will grow. Half the town is against it because they think it’ll bring with it the bad parts of Chicago.”
Walter glanced at him. “Bad parts? You mean the roads will be torn up and no one will ever repair them? The baseball teams will become national embarassments? ”
“No, I mean the gambling and the whores.”
“Oh, that.” Walter nodded. “There’s very little you can do about that.”
James Scott Byrnside 