Moonlight & Misadventure

  

As some of you might've heard, Canadian writer and editor Judy Penz Sheluk released a new crime anthology yesterday called Moonlight & Misadventure: 20 Stories of Mystery & Suspense. This is the third of her Superior Shores Press mystery anthologies--the first was The Best Laid Plans in 2019, the second was Heartbreaks & Half-truths in 2020. It's been my honor to have a connection to all three books: I wrote a cover blurb for the first and I have stories in both the second and third. And although I'm fond of all three anthologies, I'm especially pleased with the stories in M&M.

 

As for the title, which is also the theme, not all the criminal activity in these stories happen at night, but much of it does, and all the stories are connected in some way with the moon. As for misadventures, there are plenty of those, which is as it should be. If everything goes exactly as planned, where's the fun? (I seem to recall that in each episode of Mission: Impossible, the mission should have been impossible because circumstances managed to screw it up every time. But the team somehow came out okay in the end.)

Back to the topic. I wanted to mention at least a few of the twenty stories in Moonlight & Misadventure, so I chose three written by longtime friends of mine. For what it's worth, here are some observations about their stories:

"A Currency of Wishes" by Kate Fellowes. This one starts off with a guy trying to go straight and a pestering uncle trying to talk him into a get-rich-quick heist. Throw in a woman who's interested in the guy but who doesn't know about the uncle and the possible theft, and the tension starts building. It's one of those stories where nothing is crystal clear until the end, and at that point everything comes together in a way that (as Aristotle said) is both unexpected and inevitable. You'll like it.

"Strawberry Moon" by Judy Penz Sheluk. A young lady on her way back from a camping trip has to cross over from Canada to the U.S. The problem is, if you're trying to cross a border in a mystery story, you can be pretty sure there's going to be trouble with the border guards. This suspenseful story, a little shorter than most of those in the book, is another that packs a great punch in the final few paragraphs. Since this is also the editor's story, it needed to be a good one, and it is.

"Crown Jewel" by Joseph S. Walker. Joe Walker is no stranger to mystery anthologies, and I think his story here is one of the best in the book. It begins with Keenan Beech's twin brother Xavier cheating and stealing from him, and when Keenan tries to get back what was stolen he meets a group a lot more devious than the two Beech boys, and meaner too. This tale has fascinating characters, plenty of crimes and threats and double-crosses, some interesting information about an unusual hobby, and plot twists galore. The kind of story I like to read!

And if you want to see the kind of story I like to write, my contribution to this anthology is called "Reunions." It starts off with two passengers on a domestic airline flight, neither of whom know each other. They meet in an unusual way, chat for awhile, and then, when the flight's over, go their separate ways. Any reader of course knows their lives will probably intersect again in some way, but over the course of the story I've included what I hope are enough plot reversals to keep things interesting.

One quick note: It probably won't surprise you to know that the idea for my story--a random meeting of two travelers who later reconnect--came from a personal experience (as so many ideas do). In this case I was flying home once on an IBM business trip to Atlanta and got into a conversation with the guy sitting beside me on the flight. We didn't talk long, but we exchanged names and a few pleasantries before we landed and parted company, and the following day we unexpectedly wound up sitting at a conference table together for a planning meeting at a downtown bank. In real life, this wound up being nothing more than a couple of pleasantly surprised travelers, but in my story the two businessmen re-meet under far different conditions, and with far different results.

Anyhow, these are only a fifth of the stories in this book, and I can honestly tell you I enjoyed them all. I think you will too.

 Thanks, Judy, for letting me join the party, and congratulations on another fine mystery/crime anthology!