Publications like CRIMEWAVE TEN: NOW YOU SEE ME make me want to move to England. From British indie publisher TTA Press, this quasi-magazine/book is filled with top-notch short fiction. As if the title didn’t tell you, the name of CRIMEWAVE’s game is crime — the dark, dingy, grimy and grungy kind. The proof begins on page 3 with the first story, “2PM: The Real Estate Agent Arrives,” in which Steve Rasnic Tem manages to provide a real bone chill in a mere 55 words.
Joel Lane makes quite the impression with “Even the Pawn,” covering the investigation of the death of a prostitute found dumped in the trash of a Chinese restaurant. The trail leads to a sleazy world of “massage parlors,” pornographic filmmakers, alcoholics and one startling, didn’t-see-that-coming twist.
The power of that one is pretty much matched by Lisa Morton’s “Unlucky,” whose narrator is a man forever lost in life, and wants — just once — to finally even the score, even if it means committing a gruesome, ghoulish and unforgivable act of violence.
Wonderfully unconventional is Murray Shelmerdine’s “Appearances,” about a makeup artist who gets a job at a funeral home painting the faces of the dead. She falls in love with a guy she meets at her secondary bar job, and he makes a most unusual request of her cosmetic skills. I won’t reveal what it is, save for the word “clowns.” I didn’t know whether to let myself laugh or be disturbed by the task and its outcome, so I did both.
From Kay Sexton, “The Montgolfier Assignment” involves a skull fracture, a well-monied Russian and a rare antique book signed by the astronomer Galileo, not to mention a healthy dose of black humor (and talk that’ll have you craving donuts).
Nicolas Stephen Proctor provides the most poetic description of an airplane explosion — from inside the aircraft — that I’ve ever read, while Daniel Kaysen dishes out a surreal stew of sex, drugs and painting in the trippy “The Opening.”
In “Black Lagoon,” Alex Irvine doesn’t stray too far from his novel-length fantasy work in a 1984-set story of a crook who’s supposed to be dealing in underground Betamax tapes, but instead brings back a heap of copper, thus earning him some lead … and his adversaries a near EC-style comeuppance.
Apparently, CRIMEWAVE is issued irregularly for the time being, with four-issue subscriptions available, but hey, quality can’t be rushed. This edition offers 12 tales for about $15 (if online currency conversion calculators are to be believed) in a trade paperback format — worth the price, even imported. And the goods are so good that you’ll be caught unawares. To what degree? To borrow some opening words from one contribution, “my sphincter will probably never recover.” —Rod Lott
Buy it at Amazon or TTA Press.
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