‘The Good Book’ is a more straightforward PI yarn which, again, was an
almost obscene amount of fun to write.
And to balance things out, I’d like
to dedicate this to my own dad who
passed on in 1972.
Marilyn Monroe was a dish. I’ve never
really taken to the current vogue
of women who are so slim they’re
bordering on anorexic, and so when
Carole Nelson Douglas gave me the
opportunity to write a story featuring
Norma Jean, I jumped at it. This is
another of those situations (pretty much
all of them are when I stop to think
about it) that I accept a job and then
wonder what the heck I’m going to do.
But the solution came to me without
too much difficulty—it had to cover the
suspicious circumstances of
Marilyn’s death and it had to include
something about JFK . . . and, with
the current popularity of conspiracy
theories, the rest more or less took care
of itself. The result was ‘The Cost of
Freedom.’
People always ask me why I write
stories set in America when I’m
English.Well, I don’t have a good
answer except to say that I love America
and, generally speaking, I love
Americans. But every now and then I get a
specific request to set a story in
England—‘Cat On An Old School Roof ’
introduc t ion
xv
and ‘The Allotment’ are the products of
two such requests. ‘School Roof ’
was written for a Cat Crimes anthology
with the sub-theme of different
times, and I was asked by that loveable
editorial trinity of Gorman,
Greenberg, and Segriff to do something
quintessentially English. Long
an admirer of the school adventures of
the likes of Billy Bunter, Tom
Merry, and even Tom Brown, I decided
that that’s where I’d set my story—
an archetypal English boarding school
in the dog days of the 1890s . . .
complete with an obligatory school
bully and, of course, a cat.
‘The Allotment’ came about as a result
of a request from author and
editorMartin Edwards to write something
quintessentially North English for
an anthology project of such tales for
the Crime Writers’ Association. I
accepted the challenge and set to work
on something that transferred to
England the American small town
darkness and meticulously researched
social detail of Stephen King, mixing
in a liberal dose of Peter Lovesey’s
slowly unveiling suspense-style in the
process. I created my own Calder
Valley town of Luddersedge and filled
it with a potentially huge cast of
everyday bit players . . . and the result
was a great success—so great that,
within a couple of weeks, the story
sold in the U.S. to Ellery Queen’s Mystery
Magazine. However, Editor Janet
Hutchings asked for a couple of changes
for its appearance in EQMM—changes I
was happy to make and which in
no way affected a reader’s enjoyment—but
it appears here in its original
form.
For many, the abuse of children is the
most heinous crime imaginable . . .
even more horrific and unforgivable, in
its brutal theft of innocence, than
the taking of actual life. The U.S.
lawyer and author Andrew Vachss has
made this field his life work, both in
the courtroom and, with the creation of
his anti-hero Burke, on the fiction
bookshelves, and I thought I’d like to
have a shot myself. ‘A Time To Dance’—a
truly short story (fewer than
2,000 words—a record for me! I have
titles that long!)—sees Koko Tate take
on a cycle of retribution which he
believes to be the only hope for a young
boy but one with which he is
considerably less than comfortable. The story
originally appeared in the short-lived
(and truly dire) English magazine,
Dark Asylum.
‘TheMain Event’ always goes down a
storm with audiences. It’s virtually
a one-act play with but a single set,
and its central premise—a most unusual
method of poisoning—is, I believe,
entirely preposterous. But I’m informed
(reliably, I hope) that it works
incredibly well and moves like an express
train. I’ll let you be the judge. It
appeared in an anthology entitled Murder
Most Delicious and has since been
reprinted four times.
Peter Crowther
xvi
First Lady Murders was the title of an
anthology of (yes, you’ve guessed it)
murder stories featuring real First
Ladies. The brief, offered by Nancy
Pickard, asked only that contributors
picked their First Lady and let Nancy
know—I chose Edith Bolling Wilson and
decided to set the action in the
White House gardens. My one small
problem was that I didn’t know too
much about theWhite House gardens
(apart from the fact they were probably
bigger than mine), so I searched
bookstores for reference material and
spent what seemed like hours on the
web, both to no avail. In desperation,
I called the White House. Within one
week, a booklet detailing the White
House’s grounds plopped through my
mailbox. The story pretty much
wrote itself from then on.
When the Berlin Wall came down, I
foresaw problems. At the time, I
jotted down a few notes outlining a
potential story set in and around the
newly-liberated East and left it at
that. A few years later, another Cat Crimes
project reared its furry head and I
rescued the notes and wrote ‘Reunification.’
It was considered a little too downbeat
and a little too ‘nothing much
happens’ (actually, nothing at all
happens) and the editors passed on it.
Since then, it’s appeared in A Treasury
of Cat Mysteries, and I confess to a
lasting fondness for it.
Which brings us to the final story in
this book.
‘Cold Comforts’ was, I think, either my
third or fourth Koko story.We’d
just gotten through a particularly hard
winter in England, with news reports
filled with true horror stories of old
people dying of hypothermia in
unheated homes and run-down
tenements.My own mum was fairly poorly
even though—living in a self-contained
apartment at the top of our
house—she was very warm and well looked
after. Anyway, I got to thinking
about old folks—which, so long as we
don’t die young, we’ll all be ourselves
one fine day—and about maybe someone
taking responsibility for their
‘comfort’ into their own hands. It
mixes in a large amount of poetry—
something I’ve done elsewhere from time
to time, most notably in the
off-beat vampire tale ‘Too Short A
Death’—and includes winter in New
York (my favorite time in that city)
plus, of course, Koko Tate.
And that’s it for this time.
Anyone who knows me or who may have read
my various articles and
columns or who has possibly listened to
me ramble on at conventions (both
on and off the stage) will know of my
great and enduring love of short
fiction. This is my sixth collection of
the stuff and there’s another one
(Jewels in the Dust) due later this
year . . . so if you enjoy this lot, the good
news is there’s more to come and still
more being written.
introduc t ion
xvii
Right now—Saturday 4th of February 2012
(about 10 years and 11
months after my younger self first penned
an earlier version of this Foreword)—
I’m looking out of my office, seeing a
dusting of snow on the
church roof next door. I’m busy working
on a zombie story for my chum,
Stephen Jones; the second book in my
alien invasion trilogy, Forever Twilight;
and, when I can get back to it, my big
mainstream novel (set in New York,
of course), Thanksgiving.
All sorts of adventures await me . . .
as, of course, they await you, too. So
let’s stay in touch. By all means drop
me a line sometime (p.crowther3@
btinternet.com) and let me know what
you think of these tales. Writing is
such a lonely life that it’s always
nice to know there’s someone out there,
living your stories.
Meanwhile, look after yourselves and
those you care for . . . and keep on
reading!
Peter Crowther
Grosvenor House in Hornsea, England
February 2012
From an original version by Peter
Crowther
Harrogate, England
March 2001
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