Mystery Tribune / Issue Nº5: Spring 2018

By Rob Hart, Mickey Spillane, Todd Robinson and 7 more

Our 240 page Spring 2018 anniversary issue of Mystery Tribune is a must-have! This volume features previously unpublished short fiction from enduring voices such as Mickey Spillane and Max Allan Collins as well stories from Rob Hart and Todd Robinson.

A curated collection of photography from European and American artists, interview with Megan Abbott and Alison Gaylin on comics thriller "Normandy Gold", and some of the best voices in mystery and suspense are among the other highlights. 

The issue features:

Stories by Mickey Spillane, Max Allan Collins, Frank Diamond, Nels Hanson, Rob Hart, Todd Robinson, Lynn Kostoff, and Charles Roland.  Revisit of a classic essay in defense of crime fiction by Arthur Benjamin Reeve.  Interviews and Reviews by Megan Abbott, Alison Gaylin, and Tom Andes.  Photography by Guda Koster (Netherlands), Chrissie White (U.S.) and more...

An elegantly crafted quarterly issue, with a beautiful layout designed for optimal reading experience, our Spring 2018 issue will make a perfect companion or gift for avid mystery readers and fans of literary crime fiction. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mystery Tribune
• Release date: Jul 6, 2018

Book preview

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ISSUE NO. 5

MysteryTribune

SPRING 2018

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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

Nicolau Fernandes

Design and Art Direction

Leo Lipsnis

Subscriptions and Advertising

Rachel Kester

IT Manager

Jack Rodriguez

Contributors

Megan Abbott, Tom Andes, Max Allan Collins, Frank Diamond, Alison Gaylin,

Nels Hanson, Rob Hart, Guda Koster, Lynn Kostoff, Arthur Benjamin Reeve,

Todd Robinson, Charles Roland, Frank Morrison Spillane, Chrissie White

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Contents

ISSUE NO. 5

SPRING 2018

Editor’s Note

Ehsan Ehsani

Publisher and Managing Editor

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Alittle over a year ago, after years of being a Digital-only venue, I finally decided to launch the print edition of Mystery Tribune. The project was envisioned as a quarterly journal devoted not only to crime and mystery fiction but also other artistic mediums with relevant attributes.

Our team launched the first issue in an environment where critics had been lamenting the death of print mystery magazines for at least a decade if not more. We had often heard the question asked, in panels and symposia, Can a print mystery magazine thrive in the age of the Internet?

The reality is that although the impact of Internet and digitalization can't be underestimated, the ultimate driver for the survival of a mystery magazine like ours is whether we need a great print journal like Mystery Tribune.

In the age of information overload and social media distractions, the elegant issues of Mystery Tribune are designed to sink in. They are a sanctuary from daily life's noises and allow you to experience a zen-like joy. This effect is kind of ironic given the fact that our stories largely cover crime and mayhem. Well that's the beauty of it and I think that's one reason we have survived and flourished so far.

In this issue, we are honored to feature an unpublished Mickey Spillane story which Max Allan Collins was kind enough to complete for us. I personally grew up with Spillane reading his books in hiding. Those books were banned in our household for being too scandalous. Reading this new piece definitely brings the nostalgia of my childhood back.

If you haven't met Todd Robinson yet, you should: He is one of the craziest characters in crime fiction community and his story The House Where Nobody Lives is something which I am fairly sure only someone like him can produce. Lake Paradox by Rob Hart is an equally crazy story but from a calmer mind and is also highly recommended.

Besides stunning photography from Gabriel Isak and other notable photography and fiction collections, we have continued featuring crime comics: This issue includes an interview with Megan Abbott and Alison Gaylin plus a preview of Normandy Gold.

I hope you enjoy this new issue like me and certainly appreciate if you spread the word and give your friends and loved ones the gift of Mystery Tribune subscription so that we can continue the dream.

Fiction

The Punk

by Mickey Spillane

& Max Allan Collins

Co-author’s note: The Punk is based on an unproduced TV script written by Mickey in the 1950s. The subject matter makes it unlikely even a bestselling writer like Spillane could have seen it produced at that time. It may have been a pilot script for an anthology series he would have hosted and that would have been produced by his friend Gene Roddenberry.

This rainy night would be the punk’s last.

As he stands looking through the dirty moisture-streaked storefront window, studying a clock, he is not counting the hours or the minutes or even seconds. Although he is already condemned to death, he has no knowledge of his sentence.

He doesn’t even know he’s going to die, that somewhere in the night someone waits — unwittingly, at the moment — to take this ancient young man’s life.

The skinny punk in the sopping workshirt and denims hears the approaching car, sluicing through the rain, but thinks nothing of it till he hears it slow. He turns and is washed in white as a mounted spotlight makes a momentary star out of a minor player.

He cannot see the two cops in the car, but he hears them, talking about him as if he weren’t there at all.

You make him? one cop asks.

Yeah. A punk. Jo Jo something. He’s got a lot of workhouse time. Heroin addict.

Want to shake him?

Not in this damn rain. He’d be clean anyway. Let him make his connection and we’ll reach out later. Let’s go.

As the cop car pulls away, Jo Jo spits back at the rain. Lousy bastards, he mutters.

Somebody is walking, coming from the direction the cop car did — heavy footsteps splashing rain. Then an indistinct figure becomes plain as a beat cop, swinging his stick, steps under a streetlamp, pausing for an up-and-down the thoroughfare look.

Jo Jo retreats into the recession of a shop doorway. Waits and watches till the beat cop, swinging that stick, moves on.

... By the time I dump this crap, I got nickels and dimes.

Another car rounds the corner, pulling to a stop on the opposite side, down a ways. A driver sits waiting, and Jo Jo — still out of the rain, tucked in the doorway — lights up a cigarette with a kitchen match. The flare illuminates the punk’s face and announces his presence.

Jo Jo takes a drag and flips the cig prematurely away, to sizzle briefly until the rain kills it. Soon a car door has slammed and footsteps approach, and Jo Jo smiles.

The guy might have been a plainclothes cop in the raincoat and snugged-down fedora. But he isn’t.

Jo Jo asks, Got it, Rock?

"Yeah. You got it?"

Sure, sure.

Get it up, then.

Jo Jo digs out two wrist watches from a pants pocket. The connection slips out of the rain into the doorway recession, accepts the watches, looks them over without enthusiasm, his fedora emptying some rain between them.

That all? The guy sounds disgusted.

Jo Jo’s face gets hot. What do you mean, that all? Gold casing and Swiss works, man...

So?

So... how many are those good for?

Just one. You’ll get one and count yourself lucky.

You crazy? These didn’t come out of no tenement!

So they’re Swiss with gold cases. You want I should start dancing? By the time I dump this crap, I got nickels and dimes.

Jo Jo almost calls the connection a cheat, then thinks better of it, licks his lips and says, Okay, Rock. Gimme.

The connection pockets the watches, then drops a lone capsule in Jo Jo’s begging palm. There’s something both nasty and superior in the connection’s grin. Then he winks at the punk and walks back into the rain and gone.

Jo Jo studies the single capsule in his palm and says to no one, Stinking cheat!

Now he has to get out of the rain. He ducks into a nearby alley, moves past garbage cans and boxes, stops to kneel down at a basement window. The well of the window is both his hiding place, under a loose brick, and his table top, where the angle of rain doesn’t intrude. He sets a flashlight on the brick to illuminate his work.

Spoon.

Candle.

Dope melting down.

Hypo needle drawing in the stuff.

Yanks back a sleeve, exposes his inside forearm, dotted with marks. Shoots the stuff. Withdraws the needle. Kisses his arm.

You beautiful white horse you, he says.

His ecstatic expression looks back at him from the reflection in the basement window. But he doesn’t see it. He’s gone, man. Real gone.

But not so far gone he can’t, from his kneeling position, wrap up his stuff and put it back in the window well. He rises with loose, easy confidence and walks out of the alley.

He emerges a new man — bigger now, tougher, owning the world. The rain is letting up, as if he told it to. He pauses, grinning as he reaches into his breast pocket and takes out two diamond rings. He thumbs the stones. Puts the rings back. Laughs and walks off.

How do you like that, Rock, you goddamn cheat? he asks the night.

The candy store is a shoddy thing, hard to imagine a mom allowing a child inside. Behind the counter is an equally shoddy, heavy-set proprietor, in suspenders and leaning on the counter, reading a racing form. The fat man with the wolfish, bearded face looks up when he hears the door open to let the sound of diminishing rain and a customer in.

What do you want, Jo Jo? Lupo asks.

Jo Jo, closing the door, grins and walks to the counter, leaning on it. "What d’you think, Daddy Lupo?"

Lupo appraises him with a smile that would be sad if its owner had any humanity left. "I think you’re flyin’.... Well, look, I’m not cashing in any more of your loot. I caught a squeal on it, last time, punk. Nice job. Your own uptown sister you rob? Who’ll come next — me? I buy from you, then you steal the swag back, that it?"

The snick of Jo Jo’s switchblade is the immediate answer. Then the punk leans across the counter and mock-shaves the fence with the blade.

Thanks for the tip, Daddy Lupo. Maybe you’re just who I got in mind.

The automatic comes up from behind the counter. Back off, punk.

Jo Jo scowls but it turns into a grin. Bang me with that and the blues’ll tear this place apart. And what’ll they find, Daddy Lupo? How much hot stuff you got stashed here, huh?

Disgusted, Lupo says, Okay, punk. Stow the blade and we go in back.

The knife gets tucked away, the rod, too. Lupo leads Jo Jo through curtains behind the counter into a box-piled storeroom.

Let’s see what you brung me, Jo Jo.

Jo Jo gets out the rings and hands them over. Lupo has a look at them with a jeweler’s eyepiece. These from your sister’s?

What do you care?

Just asking.

Where else would I score like that? What’ll you go on them?

Lupo studies the diamonds some more, then drops the loupe in his palm. Go a hundred on each.... Don’t argue. Take it or blow.

"There’s a couple of grand wrapped up in ‘em!"

Then go someplace else and get more. From me, two yards is the limit. And show me that blade again and you won’t get any.

Jo Jo considers. Then he says, Gimme the green.

Go back out front.

What, afraid I’ll see where you hide the stuff, and help myself?

Out front, punk.

Jo Jo pushes back out through the curtains, wanders over to a penny gumball machine. Drops a coin in. Pops a gumball into his mouth and chews. Soon Daddy Lupo is back and hands over the cash. Fives, tens, twenties. Nice fat little roll.

Lupo’s smile has some sneer in it. What’re you shooting a day, punk?

Two hundred a day’s plenty to send me flyin’. Cruise over the rooftops and even do stunts. Man, I leave streamers in the sky.

Sounds like you got a big night planned.

"Who knows, Daddy?