Crimewave 10: Now You See Me
The Annual Issue of TTA Press's Anthology Edited by Andy Cox
Oct 24, 2008
Crimewave 10 (160pp, ISBN 9780955368325) is the annual issue of TTA Press's crime anthology, featuring contributions from several stalwarts of its sister publications, Interzone and Black Static -- and several times CW verges on Black Static territory. But the best stories are those that mark own their own patch.
Now You See Me
The anthology's sub-title of 'Now You See Me' immediately conjures the phrase, 'And Now You Don't.' Disappearances are at the heart of this fine peridical.
Starting with Steve Rasnic Tem's 55-word micro-fiction, '2 p.m. The Real Estate Agent Arrives,' which -in needing its title and surroundings to convey its point- isn't completely effective despite its style, vanishings abound.
Recent British Fantasy Award winner Joel Lane tells of a missing 'hostess,' but 'Even the Pawn' is more about the effect of her absence on those who knew her -alive or dead- than it is about her fate. It's the most effective of the four stories that edge into the fantastic.
Mick Scully highlights the cosmopolitan feel of CW10, which only adds to the interest. In 'Last Man,' Scully tells of Vietnamese gangsters and missing American POWs, one of the gangsters ponders whether he will fire the last shot of the war against the Americans. That had to be lucky. (p30)
Lisa Morton
The sub-theme of fortune continues with Lisa Morton's 'Lucky,' a short but densely-plotted Vegas gangster story told with economy and dry wit. Morton is a multiple award-winning horror writer who -like Tem- shows how closely thrillers and horror stories co-exist.
'Appearances' by Murray Shelmerdine is one of the highlights of the collection, a wickedly funny story of a former beautician turned enbalmer's make-up artists who, as a favour for her boyfriend paints a clown mask on one of his friends.
'101 Ways to Leave Paris' is the longest story in the collection, and shows once again what a fine writer Simon Avery is. It's a thirty-year menage-a-trois, between the two brothers and the woman who seduces them, and between the woman the narrator and the city. Glorious.
'People in hell Want Ice and Water' Nicholas Stephen Proctor --like Alex Irvine's 'Black Lagoon' and 'Your Place is in The Shadows' by Charlie Williams-- all flirt with the fantastic with differing results. While the Proctor is lyrical, there's an appropriate emptiness at its core; more tellingly, though, it doesn't take the reader anywhere they haven't been before. The Irvine is better, while Charlie Williams is the best of the triptych, like Shelmerdine's story, funny and poignant by turns.
The Third Alternative
The Portuguese word 'Saudade' means a nostalgia for something never experienced, and is everything to Darren Speegle's story of a gambler down on his luck, who shelters in Italy. The setting is close to that of Speegle's 'Lago da Iniquita' in the very last The Third Alternative, before it pupated to re-emerge as Black Static. Like that earlier story, 'Saudade' demands attention, but re-pays it with interest.
Kay Sexton's 'The Montgolfier Assignment' returns the reader to Paris, but this narrator is less lyrical, embittered, rejected by the city he once loved. The outcome is funny, if the reader finds prat-falls amusing.
'The Opening' by Daniel Kaysen is the closing story of the anthology, and a good one it is, with its obvious (to everyone but the protagonist) descent into madness.
All of the stories in Crimewave 10 have their attractions, but at least three are absolutely outstanding, and deserve to be brought to wider attention. Be it as an anthology or a magazine, Crimewave 11 is something to be looked forward to.
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