Mystery Tribune / Issue Nº3: Fall 2017

By Mystery Tribune, Scott Adlerberg, Angel Luis Colón and 5 more

Fall 2017 edition of Mystery Tribune Magazine is a must-have! The issue features short fiction from iconic voices such as Lawrence Block to literary favorites including Angel Luis Colón. A curated collection of the photography from European and American artists, along with essays, book reviews and interviews by some of the best voices in mystery and suspense are among the other highlights. 

The issue features:

• Stories by Lawrence Block, Angel Luis Colón, Scott Adlerberg, Jim Doherty, and Brian Silverman. 


• An essay on film noir by Robert Miklitsch. 


• Interviews and Reviews by Gunnar Staalesen, Ken Follett and Thomas Andes. 


• Photography by Kylli Sparre (Estonia) and Christopher Rivera (U.S.) and more.

An elegantly crafted 180 page quarterly issue, and with a beautiful layout designed for optimal reading experience, our Fall 2017 issue will make a perfect companion or gift for avid mystery readers or fans of literary crime fiction. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mystery Tribune
• Release date: Nov 28, 2017

Book preview

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ISSUE NO. 3

MysteryTribune

FALL 2017

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MysteryTribune

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P.O. Box 7638, New York, NY 10116 / email [e-mail]

To subscribe go to mysterytribune.com or call 917 526 7433

Publisher and Managing Editor

Ehsan Ehsani

Associate Editor

Elena Avanzas Álvarez

Cover Illustration

Tiago Galo

Design and Art Direction

Leo Lipsnis

Subscriptions and Advertising

Rachel Kester

IT Manager

Jack Rodriguez

Contributors

Scott Adlerberg, Tom Andes Lawrence Block, Angel Luis Colón,

Jim Doherty, Kenneth Follett, Jerry Holt, Robert Miklitsch, Christopher Rivera,

Brian Silverman, Kylli Sparre, Gunnar Staalesen

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Contents

ISSUE NO. 3

SUMMER 2018

Editor’s Note

Ehsan Ehsani

Publisher and Managing Editor

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This is a breakthrough issue for Mystery Tribune as we integrate more forcefully the power of rich fiction with photography, and illustrate how such an approach can enrich quality mystery and noir literature rather than dilute it. I am thrilled with the short fiction lineup in our new issue, as we are presenting the works of iconic voices such as Lawrence Block as well as sharp stories by literary favorites such as Angel Luis Colón.

I encourage you to acquaint yourself with the images, characters, and themes of this issue beyond short stories. And then I invite you to pass along what you’ve seen and what you’ve read. Share this issue. Lend it to a friend. Ask for it back, and then lend it to another friend. Leave it on your coffee table, or in the back seat of your car. Tell people where to buy it, or where they can submit their own writing.

Because literature is best described as a cycle. It is experience, followed by reflection, followed by expression. The cycle restarts when we come across the stories that inspire the reflecting that allows us to digest experience. It helps us laugh and cry, shudder and flex, and ultimately cope and grow.

We have done our part as editors, to go beyond just words; to bring you elegant imagery from corners of the world whether it is Scandinavia or Oregon and to compliment our short fiction with thoughtful reviews, essays and interviews.

Now it is up to you to perpetuate the spirit of Mystery Tribune.

Fiction

Scenarios

by Lawrence Block

The road veered a few degrees as it reached the outskirts of the city, just enough to move the setting sun into his rear-view mirror. It was almost dawn, its bottom rim already touching the horizon, and would have been somewhere between gold and orange if he’d turned to look at it. In his mirror, some accident of optics turned it the color of blood.

There will be blood, he thought. He’d seen the film with that for a title, drawn into the theater by the four uncompromising words. He couldn’t remember the town, or if it had been weeks or months ago, but he could summon up the smell of the movie house, popcorn and musty seats and hairspray, could recall the way his seat felt, and its distance from the screen. His memory was quirky that way, and what did it matter, really, when or where he’d seen the film? What did it matter if he’d seen it at all?

Blood? There was greed, he thought, and bitterness, and raw emotion. There was a performance which never let you forget for a moment that you were watching a brilliant actor hard at work. And there was blood, but not all that much of it.

The sun burned blood-red in his rear-view, and he bared his teeth and grinned at it. He could feel the energy in his body, the tingling sensation in his hands and feet, a palpable electrical current surging within him. The sun was setting and the night was coming and there would be a moon, and it would be a hunter’s moon.

His moon.

There would be a woman. Oh, yes, there would be a woman. And there would be pleasure — his — and there would be pain — hers. There would be both those things, growing ever more intense, rushing side by side to an ending.

There would be death, he thought, and felt the blood surging in his veins, felt a throbbing in his loins. Oh, yes, by all means, there would be death.

There might even be blood. There usually was.

#

Yes. This was the place.

It was the third bar he’d walked into, and he stepped up to the rail and ordered his third double vodka of the evening, Absolut, straight up.

As far as he could tell, all vodka was the same. He ordered Absolut because he liked the way it sounded. Once in a liquor store window he saw a vodka that called itself Black Death, and he’d tried ordering that for a while, but nobody ever had it. He didn’t suppose it would taste any different.

Next thing she knew she’d be naked, wrists and ankles tied, mouth taped, watching herself in the mirror. Like that, bitch? Happy now?.

The bartender was a short-haired blonde with hard blue eyes that took his measure as she poured his drink. She didn’t like what she saw, he could tell that much, and under the right circumstances he’d enjoy setting her straight. She had an inch-long scar on her sharp chin, and he let himself imagine giving her some new scars. Breaking some bones. Driving the heel of his hand into her temple, right next to the eye socket. If you did it just right, you got the eye to pop out. If you did it wrong, well, there was nothing to stop you from trying again, was there?

He didn’t like her, didn’t think she was pretty, wasn’t drawn to her. But he was hard already, just thinking of what he could do to her.

But all he did was pick up his glass and drain it. On nights like this the only effect alcohol had on him was to energize him. Instead of taking the edge off, it honed it. The anticipation, the heightened excitement, caused his body to metabolize alcohol differently. It coursed in his veins like amphetamine, but without the overamping, the jitters. Picked him up and straightened him out, all at once, and a pity they couldn’t use that in their ads.

The bartender had gone off to make a drink for somebody else. He thought again of the hard look in her eyes and pictured her eye popped out. He put his hand in his pocket and touched the knife. Let her keep her eyes, at least for a while. Cut her eyelids off, put her in front of a mirror, let her watch what happened to her. Cut her lips off, cut her ears off, cut her tits off. Teach her to look at him and size him up, teach her to judge him. Teach her good.

He couldn’t pick her up, no chance of that, but he could easily wait for her. Lie in ambush, be there in the shadows when she closed the bar and walked to her car. Next thing she knew she’d be naked, wrists and ankles tied, mouth taped, watching herself in the mirror. Like that, bitch? Happy now?

Then he turned away and saw the girl and forgot the bartender forever.

#

What other men would see, he supposed, was a pretty woman. Not supermodel looks, not heart-stopping beauty, but an exceptionally attractive oval face framed with lustrous dark brown hair that fell to her shoulders. He saw all that himself, of course, but what he saw most clearly was her utter vulnerability.

She was there for the taking, there to be taken, and it was almost too easy, like shooting tame animals at a game farm. Not that he ever considered letting that dissuade him from scooping her up. Her vulnerability had a powerfully erotic effect on him.