Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 141, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 858 & 859, March/April 2013

Начало книги

By our count, this is Clark Howard’s 155th published story, an extraordinary number given the length and variety of his tales and the fact that they are almost all non-series stories that require the creation of new characters. An astonishing twenty of the stories have been either award winners or nominees, for awards as various as the MWA’s Edgar, the EQMM Readers Award, the PWA’s Shamus Award, the Western Writers’ Spur Award, and the SMFS’s Derringer.

When Nelson Clay returned after lunch to his assistant curator’s office at the Great Plains Native American Museum that early summer South Dakota day, he had no way of knowing that his life was about to change forever. In retrospect, he might have suspected something when he saw a brand-new bright yellow Corvette parked in one of the spaces marked: reserved for staff. But it was Friday and his mind was elsewhere; he had just finished a bison burger, his favorite, for lunch, and he was looking forward to the weekend and driving up to Rapid City with his lady friend, for a performance of the Black Hills Chamber Music Society. His companion for the occasion would be Rose Blackthorn, the hostess at Buffalo Run Restaurant, where he had lunch every day. He had been seeing Rose for nearly three years, and their romance was flourishing.

Читать дальше →