Mystery Tribune / Issue Nº6: Summer 2018

By Brendan DuBois, Walter Mosley, Jill D. Block and 7 more

Our 240 page Summer 2018 issue of Mystery Tribune is a must-have! This volume features must-read short fiction by enduring voices such as Walter Mosley and Brendan DuBois as well stories by Jill D. Block and Erica Wright.

A curated collection of photography from European and American artists, interview with award winning Fabien Nury on noir comics thriller "Black Rock", and some of the best voices in mystery and suspense are among the other highlights. 

The issue features:

Stories by Walter Mosley, Brendan DuBois, Jill D. Block, Brodie Lowe, Rusty Barnes, Erica Wright, J.B. Stevens, Matt Phillips, Tom Larsen, and Jack Smiles.

Revisit of the classic essay "The Passing of the Detective". 

Interviews and Reviews by Dan Fesperman, Fabien Nury, and Jerry Holt.  

Photography by Michael Hemy, Marta Bevacqua, Tom Butler and more...

This issue also features a preview of new Tyler Cross noir comics and a deep dive into the recent work of Scandinavian legend Gunnar Staalesen. 

An elegantly crafted quarterly issue, our Summer 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: Sep 20, 2018

Book preview

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ISSUE NO. 6

MysteryTribune

SUMMER 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 347 770 1361

Publisher and Managing Editor

Ehsan Ehsani

Associate Editor

Jerry Holt

Cover Illustration

Caterina delli Carri

Design and Art Direction

Leo Lipsnis

Subscriptions and Advertising

Rachel Kester

IT Manager

Jack Rodriguez

Contributors

Rusty Barnes, Marta Bevacqua, Jill D. Block, Tom Butler, Brendan DuBois,

Dan Fesperman, Michael Hemy, Tom Larsen, Brodie Lowe, Walter Mosley,

Fabien Nury, Matt Phillips, Jack Smiles, J.B. Stevens, Erica Wright

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Contents

ISSUE NO. 6

SUMMER 2018

Editor’s Note

Ehsan Ehsani

Publisher and Managing Editor

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The process of editing this issue happened in various non-urban settings and even different continents. The reason: Summer vacations and the fact that with non-stop heat waves in New York, it was not wise to stay in the city unless one had to.

I read the mind-blowing literary drama by Walter Mosley, presented in this issue, in surfing cafes of Far Rockaways and Long Beach. The amazing quality of Walter's story was a reminder why he has received the title of Grand Master from Mystery Writers of America.

The legendary Brendan DuBois also has a story in this issue which, as always, is crisp and to the point. This Edgar-quality piece is a must read for all lovers of mystery fiction.

I was on vacation in Tbilisi (Capital of Georgia) when, as an agent for his daughter, Lawrence Block sent me a piece by Jill D. Block. After having shown abundant literary talent in high school and college, Jill got sidetracked and spent thirty years as a corporate real estate lawyer; a couple of years ago she got back to her true calling, and has been producing some quality short fiction. I was delighted to read her piece My Summer Vacation while I was on vacation.

If you enjoy visual intrigue, make sure you check out the work of Marta Bevacqua: Her collection of portraits, along with portrait works of two other artists are great Artistic Eye Candies.

Usual coverage of Scandinavian crime fiction and crime comics are among the other highlights of Mystery Tribune Summer 2018 edition.

I can't be more proud of what we are accomplishing here at Mystery Tribune when it comes to making great fiction, art and crime literature coverage accessible to the world. This is in part thanks to our loyal and sophisticated readers and therefore I truly appreciate your support.

Fiction

Almost Alyce

by Walter Mosley

Albert Roundhouse came from good working class family in Los Angeles. He did well in public high school and made it through three years of state college before things started falling apart.

There was a young woman named Alyce who came into Albert's life like a typhoon, at least that's what Albert's sister Luellen said.

Alyce blew in like storm, Luellen Roundhouse reported to anyone who cared to listen. She told him that she wasn't the kind of girl that belonged to anyone, or who wanted to settle down. And as much as Al tried to understand what she was telling him he just sank under all that loving like a leaky rowboat in a summer storm.

And it was true, what Luellen said. Sometimes when Albert gazed on Alyce's brown body in his bed at night he would howl and pounce on her like an animal from some deep forgotten part of the forest. And Alyce loved his hunger for her. She rolled and growled, clawed and bit with him.

And then one day she was gone; out of his bed, out of his apartment, out of the city with Roald Hopkins a sailor on furlough.

He could have been called Jimmy or Johnny, Luellen Roundhouse said. He could have been a she for all that Alyce cared. Because she was just hungry for passion from as many lovers as possible. She told Albert that. She warned him.

At about that time, September, 1979, Albert and Luellen's father, Thyme Roundhouse, met Betty Pann. He fell for Betty like his son had for Alyce. But Betty didn't run away – not at all.

It was Thyme ran out. He left Georgia, his wife, the kids' mother, and moved with Miss Pann to Seattle where they lived in a house that looked over the Pacific Ocean. Thyme became a fisherman and Betty a nurse. Blood and Fishes they had printed on their own personal stationery.

Georgia Roundhouse changed her name back to Gordon but still refused to give Thyme a divorce. She didn't quit her job as senior office manager for the City of Los Angeles but after seventeen weeks of absence she was fired.

By then Albert was failing his classes, pining for Alyce. She had sent the lovesick student a postcard telling him that she'd left Roald for another lover – Christian Lovell. Her words and tone were so friendly that Albert cried for three days. Luellen convinced her brother to drop out of school and move in with their mother, each to serve as a life preserver for the other.

Albert had never done hard labor before. He manned a wheelbarrow most days moving rock from one pile to another.

For a while it went as well as heartbreak would allow. Albert got a job for Logan Construction and came up with the small monthly mortgage payment. The rest of their money came from Georgia's private savings and what little Luellen could provide from her various part-time jobs.

Albert had never done hard labor before. He manned a wheelbarrow most days moving rock from one pile to another. He lifted and strained and grew callouses. Al was grateful for the exhaustion because that meant he would sleep rather than brood about Alyce at night in his childhood bed.

Georgia cooked dinner every day and ate with her moping son.

The mother loved Albert but for most of his life they had little in common and less to say. But with Thyme gone Georgia would find herself telling Albert about her family history. She told these stories because Albert rarely had anything to say except that he loved Alyce more and more each day.

Georgia talked about her mother and father and Grandfather Henry who had been born a slave but became a spice trader getting his own ship and working from the port of Havana. Henry's wife, Lorraine, had been a woman of the streets.

Granddad married a prostitute?

He had got himself stabbed by a Spaniard that wanted to take over his business but Lorraine found him bleeding in an alley and took him in. She nursed him back to health and Henry went out and killed that Spaniard. When he came back he told Lorraine that he would marry her and build her a big house in America where she would never have to work unless that was what she wanted.

He must have been the most colorful ancestor we got, Albert said forgetting for the moment his sorrow.

Oh no, Georgia said. Big Jim Gordon, your great uncle on my father's side, was the wildest most exciting relative. Big Jim declared war on the town of Hickton, Mississippi and fought that war for twelve long years.

War?

Oh yes, Georgia said with surety. Full-fledged war with guns and traps, dead men and blood. He lived in the woods around that town and took retribution on those that had harmed him and others of our people.

When was this?

Just after World War One and up to the Great Depression.

But the Gordons aren't from Mississippi.

Georgia smiled. It was pained cheer but Albert thought he could see how deep it ran.

You only get so much a night, Al, she said. Tomorrow I'll tell you how the white men in that town of Hickton hurt Jim, and then paid the price.

With these words Georgia Gordon got up and went to her bedroom leaving Albert to wonder about his grandfather the spice merchant and Uncle Big Jim the one-man army.

So taken was the young man about his unknown heritage that he didn't brood over Alyce that evening.

In the morning he got up early, before his mother, and went out to work in Oxnard where he spent the morning rolling chunks of concrete and granite to a pit that had been excavated by the company bulldozer. He swung a sledgehammer for three hours in the early afternoon and then used an oversized shovel in the gravel pit until his shift was through. He worked harder than usual imagining a one-man black army declaring war on a white southern town. In this reverie he didn't feel the weight of his labors or the gravity of loss.

When he got home the house was quiet and dark. Albert didn't remember the last time he'd entered the house when the television wasn't on.

Mama, the twenty-one year old son called.

He expected the here to come from one of the back rooms. But there was no welcome.

Georgia Gordon was dead in her bed, her left hand gripping the edge of the blanket near her chin. Her foot, clad in a gaudy pink cashmere sock, poked out from the sheets. There was an odor hovering in the room, a smell that Albert couldn't get out of his nose for many days.

Why didn't you call for an ambulance? Detective Todd Green asked Albert for the fourth or fifth time.

I, I could tell she was dead, he said. Her skin was cold and she hadn't been out of bed since I left this morning.

Why didn't you call the ambulance this morning?

I didn't know anything was wrong.

You knew that she hadn't gotten out of bed.

I left the house at five in the morning. When I got home all the lights were off and the paper was at the front door. I could tell that mama had never gotten up. I went in her room after she didn't answer and there she was.

Why didn't you call for an ambulance? the detective asked again.

I called my sister.

Your sister? Why?

She's her mother too. And mama was cold and the room smelled bad. Lu said to call the police and so that's what I did.

Thyme Roundhouse came down for the funeral with Betty Pann on his arm.

I'm selling the house, Al, he said at the reception after the service.

But this is mama's house.

Your mother's dead and I'm still her husband.

The full impact of the death hadn't hit Albert until his father uttered those words. From then on through the few decade the young man was confused about the sequence of events.

There were some things he was sure of. He began crying upon hearing his father's callous pronouncement; not loud bawling but it was just that the tears wouldn't stop flowing from his eyes. Luellen and Thyme had argued. Men touched him on the shoulder and head. Women kissed him and held him like he was their child.

At some point everyone was gone from the house and Albert was alone with a fifth of Jack Daniels that someone had brought for the wake...

The first bender lasted for eight or nine weeks. It carried him from the house his father was selling up to Berkeley and Telegraph Avenue. He crashed in the laundry room of a house on Derby Street.

One night he had sex with a woman in the back of a van while her husband watched from the driver's seat.

He moved out of the house and into an empty lot using a sleeping bag that a man named Hartwynn had given him. He did day labor when the hangovers were tolerable.

The Petals of the Sun commune was located in central Oregon where a redwood forest met the ocean. There he dried out for some months, but he wasn't sure how many. There was a woman with big hands, named Rilette, who had built a one-room cottage and took him in. Rilette had a brother, Marquis. Marquis and Albert went into town one night and bought a bottle of red wine and then another.

When he woke up the next morning Marquis was gone and Rilette was blaming Albert for stealing her money to buy wine.

He hadn't taken her money but she sent him away. For some reason Albert marked this event as the beginning of his roustabout years.

At some point everyone was gone from the house and Albert was alone with a fifth of Jack Daniels that someone had brought for the wake...

Finally, after three months incarceration for vagrancy in Northern California he built up enough strength and sobriety to hitchhike across country with a Native American woman named Bergit. She was half Swedish and tall and blue-eyed and completely in love with