Death Sentences

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  About this Book

  About the Editors

  Reviews

  Table of Contents

  www.headofzeus.com

  Contents

  Welcome Page

  Main Text

  Introduction

  An Acceptable Sacrifice

  Jeffery Deaver

  Pronghorns of the Third Reich

  C. J. Box

  Author’s Note

  The Book of Virtue

  Ken Bruen

  The Book of Ghosts

  Reed Farrel Coleman

  The Final Testament

  Peter Blauner

  What’s in a Name?

  Thomas H. Cook

  Book Club

  Loren D. Estleman

  Death Leaves a Bookmark

  William Link

  The Book Thing

  Laura Lippman

  The Scroll

  Anne Perry

  It’s in the Book

  Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

  The Long Sonata of the Dead

  Andrew Taylor

  Rides a Stranger

  David Bell

  The Caxton Lending Library & Book Depository

  John Connolly

  The Book Case

  Nelson DeMille

  About this Book

  Reviews

  About the Editors

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Copyright

  Introduction

  I AM OFTEN ASKED for advice by aspiring writers. Most of what I say is changeable, depending on my mood, but there is one constant: it’s hard to be a good writer without also being a good reader. When I get together with other writers we always seem to spend the majority of the conversation passing on hot tips for new books we’ve enjoyed, or reminiscing about great books from the past. There will be anecdotes about bookshops and libraries, and we will vividly remember favourite books from childhood. It is through reading that we became writers, because we found it impossible to conceive of any finer vocation in the world than storytelling.

  In the village where I grew up, there was no bookshop. The newsagent had a carousel displaying the works of Sven Hassel and Frederick Forsyth, but the small local library fulfilled additional needs. I would haunt that place, and I still recall the thrill of being told I had reached an age where I need no longer be confined to the Children’s Section. Books immersed me in different lives and worlds, far from my immediate surroundings. As soon as I could, I began writing them for my own amusement, copying the styles of favourite authors (and, yes, sometimes stealing bits and pieces of their plots, too). When I went on to university, I studied English and American Literature, eventually specialising in Scottish Literature for a never-to-be-completed PhD. A group of like-minded students would meet after classes in a local hostelry, sometimes inviting a lecturer or two along, so that our discussions could continue. It was around then I gritted my teeth and started buying hardback fiction. The prices were steep for a student (and this was in the days when books had to be sold at the cover-price), but I was unwilling to wait six months or a year for a paperback fix of the latest William Golding or Angela Carter. I cherish those well-thumbed editions to this day – they sit on groaning shelves in my house. And when I visit other people’s homes, I’ll head directly to the bookshelves to get a sense of the inhabitants’ inner lives.

  When my first few Inspector Rebus novels were published, they failed to make ripples, but eventually my publisher in the USA decided I should tour there. This was in the late 1980s, and I discovered that many American towns featured at least one small independent bookshop specialising in crime fiction. Flash-forward quarter of a century and most of them have gone, alas, but some remain. One of these is The Mysterious Bookshop in New York, and its owner, Otto Penzler, was an early champion of my work. He was – and is – an expert in the field of crime fiction, a collector, and a fan. He pens bibliographies and scholarly essays, edits short story collections, and for many years has commissioned authors to write one-off Christmas tales which are then presented as gifts to the bookshop’s loyal customers. It was Otto who came up with the idea of a series of ‘bibliomysteries’ – basically stories of a certain length in which books play a crucial role. As a fan of the genre, it seemed irresistible and fun to him, and when he started contacting authors, they agreed. Why wouldn’t they? Books have often played an integral or peripheral role in tales of mystery and adventure – Otto’s offer proved catnip to so many writers who share a passion for the written word in all its forms.

  Hence this collection.

  And what treats you have in store! What struck me when I first read these stories was their variety. Reed Farrel Coleman takes us deep into harrowing historical territory as a book rescued from a concentration camp comes to define one man’s life. Anne Perry reworks ‘The Maltese Falcon’, but adds theology and the supernatural with gripping, twisty aplomb. Jeffery Deaver focuses on a pair of assassins in Mexico as they attempt the execution of a book-loving criminal. Andrew Taylor shifts the action to London in a tale of libraries, lost love, and jealousy both professional and personal. Thomas H. Cook meantime provides a delicious slice of alternative history, revolving around a famous book – to say more might spoil a thought-provoking twist. Then there’s Mickey Spillane, with an unfinished story brought to a satisfying conclusion by contemporary author Max Allan Collins, a story where the search for a gangster’s notebook brings Mike Hammer a series of clients including cops, politicians and the mob.

  And those, dear reader, are for starters.

  The bibliomystery then is by no means a narrow sub-genre but rather one that contains multitudes, and it is fascinating to see how different authors approach the task. There are books real and imagined, with stories set in past, present and future. Some will prickle the scalp, others raise a smile. You’ll nod in appreciation of a piece of sleight-of-hand, or find your pulse quickening as a bomb is primed to explode. There are pleasing twists at the ends of some, while others resonate long in the mind, having left something at their conclusion for the reader to consider and chew on. All show their authors to be masters of their craft, their delight at the challenge set by Otto Penzler evident in the writing and plotting.

  Now read on.

  Ian Rankin, 2014

  I

  An Acceptable Sacrifice

  Jeffery Deaver

  WEDNESDAY

  THEY’D MET LAST NIGHT for the first time and now, mid-morning, they were finally starting to let go a bit, to relax, to trust each other. Almost to trust each other.

  Such is the way it works when you’re partnered with a stranger on a mission to kill.

  “Is it always this hot?” P.Z. Evans asked, squinting painfully against the fierce glare. The dense lenses of his Ray-Bans were useless.

  “No.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Usually is hotter,” Alejo Díaz replied, his English enriched by a luscious accent.

  “You’re shitting me.”

  The month was May and the temperature was around 97. They were in Zaragoza Plaza, the picturesque square dominated by a statue of two stern men Evans had learned were generals. A cathedral, too.

  And then there was the sun … like burning gasoline.

  Evans had flown to Hermosillo from outside D.C., where he lived when he wasn’t on the road. In the nation’s capital—the nation to the north, that is—the temperature had been a pleasant 75.

  “Summer can be warm,” Díaz admitted.

  “Warm?” Evans echoed wryly.

  “But then … You go to Arizona?”

  “I played golf in Scottsdale once.”

  “Well, Scottsdale is hundreds of miles north of here. Think a
bout that. We are in the middle of a desert. It has to be hot. What you expect?”

  “I only played six rounds,” Evans said.

  “What?”

  “In Arizona. For me to only play six rounds … I thought I’d die. And we started at seven in the morning. You golf?”

  “Me? You crazy? Too hot here.” Díaz smiled.

  Evans was sipping a Coke from a bottle whose neck he’d religiously cleaned with a Handi-wipe before drinking. Supposedly Hermosillo, the capital of Sonora, was the only city in Mexico that treated its water, which meant that the ice the bottles nestled in was probably safe.

  Probably.

  He wiped the neck and mouth again. Wished he’d brought a miniature of Jack Daniels to use as purifier. Handi-wipe tasted like crap.

  Díaz was drinking coffee, to which he’d added three or four sugars. Hot coffee, not iced. Evans couldn’t get his head around that. A Starbucks addict at home and a coffee drinker in any number of the third-world places he traveled to (you didn’t get dysentery from boiled water), he hadn’t touched the stuff in Hermosillo. He didn’t care if he never had a hot beverage again. Sweat tickled under his arms and down his temple and in his crotch. He believed his ears were sweating.

  The men looked around them, at the students on the way to school, the businessmen meandering to offices or meetings. No shoppers; it was too early for that, but there were some mothers about, pushing carriages. The men not in suits were wearing blue jeans and boots and embroidered shirts. The cowboy culture, Evans had learned, was popular in Sonora. Pickup trucks were everywhere, as numerous as old American cars.

  These two men vaguely resembled each other. Thirties, compact, athletic, with round faces—Díaz’s pocked but not detracting from his craggy good looks, reflecting some Pima Indian in his ancestry. Dark hair both. Evans’s face was smoother and paler, of course, and a little off kilter, eyes not quite plumb. Handsome too, though, in a way that might appeal to risk-taking women.

  They were in jeans, running shoes and short-sleeved shirts, untucked, which would have concealed their weapons but they weren’t carrying today.

  So far there was no reason for anyone to wish them harm.

  That would change.

  Some tourists walked by. Hermosillo was a way station for people traveling from the U.S. to the west coast of Sonora. Lots of people driving, lots of buses.

  Buses …

  Evans lowered his voice, though there was no one near. “You talked to your contact this morning, Al?”

  Evans had tried out shortening the Mexican agent’s name when they first met—to see how he’d react, if he’d be pissed, defensive, hostile. But the man had laughed. “You can call me Al,” he’d said, the line from a Paul Simon song. So the test became a joke and Evans had decided then that he could like this guy. The humor also added to the infrastructure of trust. A lot of people working undercover think that saying “fuck” and making jokes about women creates trust. No. It’s humor.

  “Sí. And from what he say … I think our job, it will not be easy.” He took the lid off his coffee and blew to cool it, which Evans thought was hilarious. “His security, very tight. Always his security man, a good one, Jos, is with him. And word is they know something’s planned.”

  “What?” Evans’s face curled up tight. “A leak?”

  And this, Díaz seemed to find funny, “Oh, is always a leak. Every egg in Mexico has a crack. They won’t know about us exactly but he has heard somebody is in town to kill him. Oh, sí, he has heard.”

  The “he” they were speaking of was Alonso María Carillo, better known as Cuchillo—in Spanish: “Knife.” There was some debate about where the nickname came from. It probably wasn’t because he used that weapon to kill rivals—he’d never been arrested for a violent crime … or any crime, for that matter. More likely the name was bestowed because he was brilliant. Cuchillo, as in sharp as a. He was supposedly the man behind one of the cartels in Sonora, the Mexican state that, in addition to neighboring Sinaloa, was home to the major drug gangs. But, though it was small, the Hermosillo Cartel was one of the most deadly, responsible for a thousand or more deaths … and the production of many tons of drugs—not only cocaine but insidious meth, which was the hot new profit center in the narcotics trade.

  And yet Cuchillo was wily enough to avoid prosecution. The cartel was run by other men—who were, the Federales were sure, figureheads. To the world, Cuchillo was an innovative businessman and philanthropist. Educated at UCLA, a degree in business and one in English literature. He’d made his fortune, it appeared, through legitimate companies that were known for being good to workers and were environmentally and financially responsible.

  So due process wasn’t an option to bring him to justice. Hence the joint operation of Alejo Díaz and P.Z. Evans—an operation that didn’t exist, by the way, if you happened to bring up the topic to anyone in Washington, D.C., or Mexico City.

  “So,” Evans said, “he suspects someone is after him. That means we’ll need a diversion, you know. Misdirection. Keep him focused on that, so he doesn’t figure out what we’re really up to.”

  “Yes, yes, that is right. At least one diversion. Maybe two. But we have another problem: We can’t get him into the open.”

  “Why not?”

  “My contact say he’s staying in the compound for the next week. Maybe more. Until he think it’s safe.”

  “Shit,” Evans muttered.

  Their mission was enwrapped with a tight deadline. Intelligence had been received that Cuchillo was planning an attack on a tourist bus. The vehicle would be stopped, the doors wired shut and then the bus set on fire. The attack would occur on Friday, two days from now, the anniversary of the day the Mexican president had announced his most recent war on the cartels. But there the report ended—as had, presumably, the life of the informant. It was therefore impossible to tell which bus would be targeted; there were hundreds of them daily driving many different routes and run by dozens of companies, most of whom didn’t want to scare off passengers by suspending service or cooperating with law enforcement. (In his groundwork for the mission, Evans had researched the bus operators and noted one thing their ads all had in common: they began with variations on Mexico Is Safe!!)

  Even without knowing the specific bus, however, Díaz and Evans had found a way to stop the attack. The biggest cartels in Sinaloa and Sonora were pulling back from violence. It was very bad publicity—not to mention dangerous to one’s health—to kill tourists, even accidentally. An intentional attack on innocents, especially Americans, could make the drug barons’ lives pure hell. No rivals or anyone within his organization would challenge Cuchillo directly but the agents had learned that if he, say, met with an accident his lieutenants would not follow through with the attack.

  However, if Cuchillo would be hiding in his compound until after the bus burned down to a scorched shell, then Díaz’s contact was right; their job would not be easy. Drone surveillance had revealed that the house was on five acres, surrounded by a tall wall crowned with electric wire, the yard filled with sensors and scanned by cameras. Sniping wouldn’t work because all the buildings—the large house, the separate library and detached garage—had thick bulletproof windows. And the walkways between those structures were out of sight of any vantage points where a shooter could set up.

  As they sat bathed in the searing sun, Evans wondered if your mind slowed down the hotter it got. Oatmeal came to mind, steaming sludge.

  He wiped his forehead, sipped Coke and asked for more details about Cuchillo’s professional and personal life. Díaz had quite a bit of information; the man had been under investigation for the past year. Nodding, Evans took it all in. He’d been a good tactician in the Special Forces; he was a good tactician in his present job. He drained the Coke. His third of the day.

  Nine fucking forty-five in the morning.

  “Tell me about his weaknesses.”

  “Cuchillo? He has no weaknesses.”

  “Wh
atta you mean? Everybody has weaknesses. Drugs, women, men? Liquor? Gambling?”

  Weakness was a very effective tool of the trade in Evans’s business, as useful as bullets and C4. Usually, in fact, more so.

  Díaz added yet one more sugar to his cup, though there was only a small amount of coffee remaining. He stirred elaborately. Figure eight. He sipped and then looked up. “There is maybe one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Books,” the Mexican agent said. “Books might be his weakness.”

  The weather in Washington, D.C. was pleasant this May evening so he picked a Starbucks with an outdoor patio … because, why not?

  This was in a yuppie area of the district, if yuppies still existed. Peter Billings’s father had been a yuppie. Shit, that was a long time ago.

  Billings was drinking regular coffee, black, and no extra shots or foamed milk or fancy additives, which he secretly believed that people asked for sometimes simply because they liked the sound of ordering them.

  He’d also bought a scone, which was loaded with calories, but he didn’t care. Besides, he’d only eat half of it. At home in Bethesda, his wife would feed him a Lean Cuisine tonight.

  Billings liked Starbucks because you could count on being invisible. Business people typing resumes they didn’t want their bosses to see, husbands and wives typing emails to their lovers.

  And government operatives meeting about issues that were, shall we say, sensitive.

  Starbucks was also good because the steam machine made a shitload of noise and covered up the conversation if you were inside and the traffic covered up the conversation if you were outside. At least here on the streets of the District.