"…his stories are always sharp and compact and interesting." ——Angel Martinez "(One of) the hottest authors in the independent horror scene…" —-Hellbound Books
Publisher Crippen and Landru’s second collection of William Brittain’s fine mystery stories “The Man Who Solved Mysteries” is wonderful, perfect and long, long overdue.
Brittain, who later wrote Y. A. mystery and fantasy novels, started out his writing short mysteries, most of which appeared in Ellery Queen or Alfred Hitchcock mystery magazines over fifty years ago. He had been a teacher in real life and his series character is Mr. Leonard Strang, a High School science teacher who winds up solving mysteries.
The Strang stories had never been collected despite a clamor for them until the recent C & L collection “The Man Who Read Mysteries,” which brought Mr. Strang between hard covers and also collected all of Brittain’s clever “Man Who Read” mysteries.
Packaged with a fine introduction from editor Josh Pachter as well as a reminiscence by Brittain’s son, James and a fine bibliography of William Brittain’s work, the centerpiece of the book is the remaining twenty-five of the Strang stories.
The tales feature moods from the comedic to the tragic and mysteries ranging from crimes, theft and murder and even a historical mystery (in “Mr. Strang Examines a Legend.”) The societal climate of the 60s through the eighties provides a backdrop to many of the stories with civil rights and the counterculture featuring prominently. This makes some of the stories feel almost like historical mysteries themselves as they document a youth culture now decades past.
Almost overlooked is the fact that Brittain was also a master of the Impossible Crime or Miracle Problem and several are featured. The very simple solution of “Mr. Strang Picks Up the Pieces.” The Impossible Vanishment of “Mr. Strang Pulls a Switch.” The clever and complex killing in “Mr. Strang Accepts a Challenge.”
In the stories, answers are found, justice is served and the innocent are exonerated.
And readers are entertained.
Here’s the link to buy not only “The Man Who Solved Mysteries” but “The Man Who Read Mysteries.” As well as the forthcoming collection of the rest of William Brittain’s non-series mystery short-stories “The Man Who Wrote Mysteries.” (Don’t forget to look for the hidden noose on the cover!)https://crippenlandru.com/magento/index.php/
Fittingly the typewriter page is blank in the picture because I haven’t done much writing the last couple of months. I’ve done the usual weekly and monthly flash fictions but not much else. Not a matter of taking a needed break, I’ve just sloughed-off on the writing.
I have two stories I need to revise and I didn’t do much on the one that has a deadline (the end of this short month!) except write some notes last week and type up a couple of hundred words tonight.
More progress like that and I should get that done!
Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work-in-progress or published, or a recommendation of someone else’s work with at least one LGBT character. Posted at Rainbow Snippets here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
“Programming,” Bryan said. “They hooked you up to an, an encephalic mind thingie. Programmed you,” he said flatly. “Me too. We’re supposed to believe that this is really us, that this is how we really feel. It’s the programming, we were programmed to fall in love and get romantic and physical and, and, oh, God you have nice legs!”
Here’s snippet two:
“Programming,” Nico said as he rubbed Bryan’s chest. “Like robots? Oh, God, we’re not robots are we?”
“No,” Bryan said, in between kisses. “We’re not robots.” After a few more minutes of kissing, Nico pulled away and stared up at the sky.
That’s it for this week. I wrote a sequel which is in the link to the original story. Maybe some day I’ll turn this one into something full-length. ‘Till then, take care and stay warm! ——jeff
Danny stood and stared at the ocean, the sand under his sneakers the old wooden school desk a few feet away.
Where am I now, he wondered.
He shook his head. He’d been hired to clean out the old storeroom at the top floor of the old warehouse. That’s where he’d found the old desk. He’d seen pictures of them, right down to the hole at front where a student could put an inkwell or in more modern times, a cup with pens and pencils. Hed been full of nostalgia and had managed to squeeze into the desk, six-foot-two, twenty-five years old wasn’t too big and he’d been reading the names scrawled into the desk and wishing he was somewhere other than working a nowhere job that had been nothing like what he wanted to do when there was a rush of air and the room seemed to blur and swirl around him and there was a feeling of forward motion and suddenly he had been just outside the city but it was midday not early morning.
He had about freaked and had slapped himself in the face. Not dreaming. It hit him suddenly that the desk might have something to do with. He sat down again and for an instant thought of wishing he was back at the warehouse. Then he had another thought. If this wasn’t a dream or even if it was he wasn’t going to just go back. But forward.
He thought of a beach and wished. Hard.
The world had dissolved and he’d been on the beach.
He stared. It wasn’t dusk yet. Where was this beach? Was he traveling in time as well as space? He looked upward, relieved to see a jet, not a pterodactyl.
He was on the opposite coast. Probably in the present. Probably. He could test that, sit in the desk and try to go back to 1776 in Philadelphia or something.
He thought some more. Where was somewhere he really wanted to go? Norway, to see the Northern Lights? No, he hadn’t brought a jacket. London? No, it was probably after midnight there and he didn’t have any money.
But there were places he wouldn’t need money. Someplace to start out small.
He smiled. He knew exactly where he wanted to go.
—end—
(Note: Title is a quote from Christopher Marlowe.—–jeff b.)
Note: This was originally published in The Vantage following a campus-closing snowstorm in January 1983. I present it here with only slight alteration for clarity nearly forty years later. Oh, and it references “Frosty” Sheridan. (For the record, I was a young Senior.)
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Conversations on that fateful Monday January 31, 1983 tended towards the weather, more specifically, the predictions of snow for the late evening.
Many people spent the afternoon commenting on the light drizzle which occasionally sputtered from the gray sky, or in recollection of the many times when the weathermen had been wrong in the past.
By 8 p.m. the conversation had turned to comparisons with 1978, 1971, 1970 and even 1888. Snow was falling, or rather being dumped by malicious clouds.
The scene the next morning was of a campus enshrouded in a velvety blanket of white, albeit a thick one, and a miniature version of the Himalayas where the parking lot used to be. Snow continued to fall, making the valiant attempts to clear the sidewalk by Newman’s janitorial staff (led by Frosty the Snowman) wasted at best.
Driving conditions? Pitiful.
Would Sister JoAnn Mark, academic dean, call off classes?
No one really cared. It was near impossible to get from McNeill to the cafeteria, let alone to school from off-campus.
Snowbound, the students of Newman did the only thing they possibly could to survive under the circumstances.
The Town and Country Market began to run low on beer by Tuesday night. One party was, according to rumor, held continuously for two days, interrupted by occasional snowball fights inside the dorm room. Someone started humming the “Twilight Zone” theme as more snow fell.
Wednesday dawned drably, as symptoms of stir craziness began to set in. Snowfall started and stopped on-and-off during the day and evenings. Record albums were ground to fine powder from constant replay. During it all, nobody seemed to notice that it was February 2nd.
Groundhog Day.
Thursday morning. The song “Winter Wonderland” has lost its charm. A 7:30 phone call from my Mom. She’s heard incorrectly that Friends and Newman are holding classes today.
“Mom…I don’t have any Thursday classes…”
Friday—classes resume! Yaaaayyy! Return to normalcy!
A bright-eyed, bushy-tailed instructor skips merrily into the classroom, freed from imprisonment in a suburban house with six kids and addresses the class.
“Is anybody here today? No? Oh well…” he says and begins to recite the day’s lecture.
In the sky, the clouds chuckle grimly, planning another evening onslaught of that unmentionable white stuff.
From The Vantage, February 10, 1983.
Written by Jeff Baker. Special thanks to editor Linda Panzer and Advisor (the late) Jeanne Cardenas. Oh, and The Vantage was the college paper I worked on at Newman University, then called “Kansas Newman College.”
The draws for this month’s Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were Fan Fiction, set in a Pizza Parlor including a Sack of Potatoes. I’ll post the results here as they come in (No rush!)
AUTHOR’S NOTE: The draws for the February Flash Fiction Draw Challenge were A Fan Fiction, set in a Pizza Parlor, including a sack of potatoes. Enjoy this and see if you recognize the characters I’m riffing on here. I’ll have a spoiler after it’s over! ——jeff
Willie Nocomis sighed. The last three hours had not been going well.
Two of the servers at the Pizza parlor hadn’t shown up for their shifts, and there was a prospective buyer coming in that afternoon. He’d gotten Annie to come in and he’d managed to wait tables and do dishes and help Skip Grumby make the pizzas. Usually he just stood by the register and handed out menus during the noon rush.
He glanced at the clock. Just about three hours of this. It was slow enough to take a break. But somebody had to peel the potatoes. He walked into the kitchen. Skip Grumby, big and bluff was filling the bin with tomato sauce.
“Y’know, if I wanted to work like this in a kitchen I would never have left the navy, Little Buddy!” Grumby said with a grin, playfully tossing his chef’s hat at Willie.
“Tell me about it,” Willie said. “At least in those days, nobody used to walk off a ship if they didn’t want to do their shift.” He pulled the fifty pound sack of potatoes out from under the dishwasher and started peeling.
“What happened to the guy you hired to peel the potatoes?” Grumby asked.
“You mean the guy I hired to wash dishes, peel potatoes and bus tables after the last guy I hired to wash dishes, peel potatoes and bus tables quit?” Willie asked.
“Yeah,” Grumby said.
“He quit.”
“Oh,” Grumby said. “Glad we know how to make the fries.”
“Willie!” Annie said. “You’ll never guess who just walked in!”
“The investor?” Willie asked, dropping the peeler in the sack of potatoes.
“No,” Annie said. “Her! She used to work here! Before you bought the place! Before she went to Hollywood and became famous!”
She was sitting in a corner booth wearing a sequined dress and red, bouffant hair. Willie walked up to her with a menu.
“Hi, I’m Willie Nocomis,” he said. “Would you like to try our special minnows and anchovy pizza?”
He tried handing her a menu but instead handed her a half-peeled potato.
“Oops!” Willie said handing her the menu.
“That sounds absolutely heavenly!” she said in a breathy voice. “Don’t make any fuss over me. I’m just here to be like anybody else having a pizza. Oh, and I’m expecting my P. R. man, Mr. Feldman to join me. If he doesn’t go the wrong way again.”
Willie took her order, and was in the kitchen when he saw the front door open. The man who entered was immaculately dressed with a diamond stickpin and a cane with a gold handle and an opera cape. The woman who accompanied him was tall, dignified, silver haired and wearing pearls AND diamonds.
“Hello,” he said in a Harvard accent. “I’m Thurlow Filthyrich the First. I’m here to place an order of pizza and a pizza franchise to go.”
“Thurlow, dahhhhling,” the woman said. “Don’t forget to buy the parking lot and an order of fries.”
“Yes, my lovey-dovey,” Thurlow said. “We’ll see if they have a box big enough for the parking lot.”
Willie had ducked back into the kitchen and brushed the potato peel off his shirtfront, talking to himself all the while.
“This is important, this is important, don’t be nervous, don’t be nervous. We’re gonna franchise, we’re gonna franchise!”
He stepped back into the dining room and was about to say something when he was interrupted by a bespectacled man, a customer in his thirties holding a sheaf of papers who had jumped up from under one of the booths.
“Everybody listen to me!” the man said. “I’m from the University, I’m a professor studying everything including Reverse-Geology. We have to take cover! If my calculations are correct we’re about to experience an…”
The building began to suddenly rumble and shake.
“…earthquake!”
There was yelling, the clatter of dishes, potatoes flying everywhere and suddenly everything began spinning, spinning, spinning…
Willie woke up flailing his arms in the air, falling out of the hammock. He landed safely (he’d done it enough times.) He glanced at the bottom bunk.
“At least you coulda broken my fall,” he said to the snoring figure in the bottom bunk. Hadn’t even woken up.
He took a deep breath of the island night breezes wafting through their hut. Then he sniffed the air.
“Skipper,” he said. “Have you been eating pizza?”
—end—
AUTHOR’S ADDENDA: The last T. V. show I would have thought I could bring to a mainland pizza parlor was “Gilligan’s Island.” Then I remembered the imaginative dream sequences they used to do on that fine and underrated series. If it was one tenth as funny, I’ll be happy! Oh, and “Nocomis” is a type of minnow!—–jeff
Staying home with the hubby for Valentine’s Day. So, I have a couple of snippets from a romantic story today.
Every week we post six lines from a work of ours, a work-in-progress or published, or a recommendation of someone else’s work with at least one LGBT character. Posted at Rainbow Snippets here:https://www.facebook.com/groups/963484217054974
High school had been seventeen years ago. We’d both been serious closet cases. Then Henry had his “little accident” at the research facility his Dad worked at the summer after our freshman year. He’d gotten his invisibility largely under control by the start of school but he still needed to be invisible about twelve hours a day or he’d start fading. That meant a lot of ducking out to the restroom in the middle of class. The next two years felt like a very weird cable kid’s show, with both of us jumping around to keep anybody else from finding out that Henry spent part of his time literally out of sight.
Here’s another snippet
Senior Prom was cool. By that time Henry and I had discovered each other. I was ostensibly taking Jan Hall but Henry was my real date. Invisibly. It looked like I was slow dancing with myself during the last dance and kissing thin air, but I didn’t care. I told everybody I’d been stood up and the Principal gave me a breath test, but still, Senior Prom was cool.
That’s it for this week, and yes, the idea did come from my being in High School and wondering what it would be like if I could turn invisible (I read too many comic books and watched too many TV shows like that!) And I have no idea how many fonts I’ve used here!——jeff b.
I was there late that evening in the old Lopresti Library because the books I needed weren’t online and I couldn’t check them out. Somehow the guard and I must have missed each other when I wandered from the old reading room in the basement to go to the Men’s room because when I walked from there through the back corridor I realized the only lights on were the emergency exit lights and a couple of bulbs that were always on.
I walked into the old reading room, which was pretty much a storeroom with boxes lining one wall, a bookshelf lining the opposite wall and a long table straight out of a grade-school lunchroom in the middle of the room. I picked up my notebook (spiral bound, this was about 1986) and glanced up at the old light bulb with a metal shade on top of it hanging from the ceiling. I didn’t know if it ever shut off.
I wandered down the hall and up the short flight of stairs leading to the old checkout desk that had been there since the library was built there in Pending, Kansas in 1919. I figured if the security guy was still there I’d explain things, tell him I was Carl Fiske and I was studying for a big midterm and he’d let me out. Small college town, they all knew everybody. If not, I’d go out the back delivery door, hoping it didn’t trigger an alarm.
I looked around. Nobody there. Lights almost all out. I sighed and headed towards the back of the building.
That was when I heard the voices.
“Nobody under the bed; nobody in the closet: nobody in his…I used that, didn’t I?” the first voice said.
“Yes, you used the lines before, but they do have the ring of poetry,” said a female voice.
“While poetry is all to some, prithee attend to the task at hand,” said a third, this time male, voice.
“It’s true, you know, when the lights are low, gotta go with the flow…” said a fourth voice.
I peeked around a stone column and a bookcase and saw several people at one of the main library tables in a dim light. The one who had finished speaking was wearing jeans and a plaid, long sleeved shirt and was actually smoking. He took a long drag, leaned back in the chair and blew a long puff of smoke upward.
“And it works just so…” he finished.
I wondered for a second if this wasn’t a late night book club. I hadn’t seen any fliers advertising it. Then I got a good look at the others. The woman was in a long, white gown of an earlier era. The bald man was wearing a suit with long stockings, puffed-out shoulders like on Dynasty and a white collar and another man was in a velvety blue suit that looked vaguely Nineteenth Century. He had a dark beard and looked familiar. And there was a Black man in modern dress I could not see clearly.
The whole thing made me think of that show PBS had aired years ago when figures from history would be on a talk show. Maybe this was like that.
I stepped out from behind the column where I could get a better view. The five of them had papers and pens in front of them. They didn’t seem to notice me, but I was still in shadow.
“The stars above trudge their nightly path, the working man below trudges the dust.” This was the Black man, who pointed upward as he spoke. “And we will get nothing accomplished if we do not write this down.”
“Well put, Langston,” said the bearded man in the velvety suit whose voice I identified as the first speaker.
“I still do not know about this,’ said the woman in white. “My poems were my garden, but a private little one by a house of all my cares.”
“Surely nobody will know who has done this work, were we to sign it ought none to believe it,” said the bald man. “Our life exempt from public haunt.”
They laughed at this and one of them chortled and repeated the word “haunt.”
I was going to announce my presence but I had glanced upward and saw no source for the light streaming down upon them. Instead, they were in a light with no source, like the haze of sunlight in the dark sky at the middle of the night’s cycle.
I quickly backed away and headed for the exit. The metal door opened after a moment of pushing on the bar, thankfully not setting off an alarm. I walked around the building to where I’d parked my car. By the time I reached the car I was running.
—end—
AUTHOR’S NOTE: My late father, Wm R. Baker, wanted to be a writer but never got around to it. This was an idea he told me about some forty years ago. I decided to finally write it down, because we both loved libraries and authors. ——jeff b. 2/10/22
authorjeffbaker 