Didn’t think I was going to get to it, but I wrote a few lines on the mystery, even more importantly I tightened up a few things. The MS has at least a page-and-a-half of notes written IN CAPITAL LETTERS, so when I use those and delete them the MS may be about 2500 words, not a bad length for a mystery.

And I finished reading L. Frank Baum’s only mystery short-story “The Suicide of Kiaros,” reprinted in “Knights of Madness,” edited by Peter Haining. A locked-room mystery that plays out like an inverted detective story (way before Columbo!) where the reader knows the killer’s identity from the start, but the story does not bring on a conventional detective. The ending, however, is a perfect twist which would have made a great Alfred Hitchcock Presents, except I don’t know how they could have done it. It relies on one word…

That’s all for now!