Dangerous Women

by Otto Penzler

Genres: Mystery

Synopsis

The acclaimed authors in this anthology are collectively responsible for dozens of "New York Times" bestsellers. Legendary editor Otto Penzler owns the Mysterious Bookshop in New York and is founder of the Mysterious Press and Otto Penzler books.

Release date: July 31, 2007

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Print pages: 384

Sample

INTRODUCTION

What makes a woman dangerous? No doubt there are any number of opinions, depending upon the experience of the man or woman who responds.

Personally, I think the most dangerous women are those who are irresistible. Each of us may have a unique weakness, an Achilles’ heel that is unfathomable to others, or we may share universal sensibilities that everyone understands. It may be a woman’s great beauty that wins our hearts, or her charm, or intelligence. It may be the way she brushes her hair back from her eyes, or the way she laughs, or the way she sneezes.

She may be acutely aware of her power, or utterly innocent of it. One will use it as a steel-edged weapon, another as a fuzzy security blanket. The intent neither increases nor diminishes the power, and that is the terrible danger to those who may be in thrall to it.

Power is dangerous. We may know it, even fear it, but if we want the heat from that flame, we will risk everything to get as close to it as possible.

Dangerous women have always been with us. Remember Delilah? Authors have understood the ferocious attraction of dangerous women and used them as literary devices relentlessly. Most of the great women of history, as well as most significant female literary figures, have been dangerous. Perhaps not to everyone, but frequently to those who have fallen in love with them. Men have killed for dangerous women, betrayed their countries, their loved ones and themselves, given up thrones and committed suicide. Sometimes the dangerous women may even be worth it—worth risking everything and giving up all one holds dear.

Many literary detectives have been aware of the dangerous woman. Sam Spade fell for one, Brigid O’Shaughnessy, while Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer are often chased by them; they have been known to allow themselves to be caught.

Sherlock Holmes, although he allowed himself to be enamored of Irene Adler (“the daintiest thing under a bonnet on this planet”), had a famously powerful aversion to most members of the opposite sex. “Women are never to be entirely trusted—not the best of them,” Holmes stated in The Sign of the Four. “I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance money.”

Although Archie Goodwin loves women, his boss, Nero Wolfe, generally speaks and behaves like a misogynist. “You can depend on women for anything except constancy,” he said. Further, while in a particularly foul mood, he declared, “The vocations for which they [are] best adapted are chicanery, sophistry, self-advertisement, cajolery, mystification and incubation.”

And neither Holmes nor Wolfe ever met the dangerous women on these pages. They would have been shocked and appalled. But, as I predict you, too, will be, they would have been fascinated. They would have been helpless in their desire to know what they were up to, where they would lead, what adorable little tricks they had up their sleeves.

It is clear from the enduring success of Hammett, Chandler, Macdonald, Doyle and Rex Stout that they understood much, including the appeal, of a kind, of dangerous women. The authors in this book have proven to be no less accomplished in providing an array of femmes fatale to delight you—and cause you to shudder in relief that they are not women who matter in your life. At least, for your sake, it is to be hoped that they don’t.

Lorenzo Carcaterra is the author of six books, including the controversial Sleepers, which became a New York Times number one best seller both in hardcover and paperback, as well as a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt, Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, Kevin Bacon and Minnie Driver. He is currently a writer and producer for the NBC series Law and Order.

After a successful career as a journalist, Michael Connelly turned to fiction writing and produced The Black Echo, which introduced his LAPD detective Hieronymous Bosch and won an Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. He followed this with three more Bosch novels, Black Ice, The Concrete Blonde and The Last Coyote, then wrote a stand-alone thriller, The Poet. As one of the world’s most beloved authors, his books have become automatic best sellers in many countries.

The young Irish writer John Connolly has worked as a bartender, a local government official, a waiter, a dogsbody at Harrods department store and a journalist. The former policeman Charlie Parker was introduced in 1999 in Every Dead Thing, and followed in Dark Hollow, The Killing Kind and The White Road. Connolly’s most recent novel, Bad Men, is a stand-alone thriller. No writer working today better combines the detective novel with elements of the supernatural.

When the Mystery Writers of America gave Thomas H. Cook the Edgar Allan Poe Award for The Chatham School Affair in 1997, it was an overdue honor for one of America’s finest crime writers. He had been previously nominated for Edgars in two other categories, Best First Novel and Best Fact Crime, and had won the Herodotus Award for Best Historical Short Story of the Year for “Fatherhood.”

Jeffery Deaver was working as a journalist when he decided to go to law school so that he could become a legal writer. Instead, he practiced law for several years and, while taking long commutes, began writing suspense fiction with extraordinary success. He has been nominated for four Edgars and won the Ellery Queen Reader’s Award for best short story of the year three times. His Lincoln Rhyme novels are staples on the bestseller lists; The Bone Collector was filmed with Denzel Washington as the paralyzed former forensic officer and Angelina Jolie as the young cop who helps bring a serial killer to justice.

Few writers sell as many books as Nelson DeMille, whose blockbuster thrillers have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. Notable for their impeccable plotting and distinguished literary style, his best sellers include The Lion’s Game, Plum Island, Spencerville, Gold Coast, Word of Honor and The General’s Daughter, a pure detective novel successfully filmed starring John Travolta, with a screenplay by William Goldman. “Rendezvous” is his first short story in twenty-five years.

J. A. Jance did not have an easy time becoming a best- selling author. She was denied entry to a creative writing program because the professor thought women should be teachers or nurses, and her alcoholic husband agreed. After her divorce and his death at the age of forty-two from acute alcohol poisoning, she wrote from 4:00 to 7:00 a.m. before sending her kids off to school. Her series about Detective J. P. Beaumont began modestly as paperback originals but now are regulars on bestseller lists.

Writing as Andrew Klavan and using the pseudonym Keith Peterson, the author has won two Edgars but has somehow failed to make the best-seller list, though he has had great success in Hollywood. Clint Eastwood directed and starred in True Crime, about a journalist trying to save an innocent man; it also featured Isaiah Washington, James Woods, Denis Leary and Lisa Gay Hamilton. Two years later, Michael Douglas and Famke Janssen starred in another film based on a Klavan novel, Don’t Say a Word.

Often regarded as the finest crime writer alive (Newsweek said maybe the best ever), Elmore Leonard has had twenty consecutive best sellers, including Mr. Paradise, Tishomingo Blues, Pagan Babies and the short story collection When the Women Come Out to Dance. Numerous films have been made from his work: Hombre,3:10 to Yuma, The Moonshine War, Stick, The Big Bounce, Get Shorty, Out of Sight and Jackie Brown. He has been named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America for lifetime achievement.

Three of the first four books Laura Lippman wrote were nominated for Edgar Allan Poe Awards, a feat unmatched in the history of the Mystery Writers of America; Charm City won. The series of detective fiction novels featuring Tess Monaghan also won Shamus, Agatha and Anthony awards from the Private Eye Writers of America, and the Malice Domestic and Bouchercon conventions respectively.

Evan Hunter and Ed McBain are two best-selling novelists living in the same body. Hunter’s first adult novel, The Blackboard Jungle, shocked a nation, as did the wildly successful film made from it. As McBain, he has written more than fifty novels, including the iconic 87th Precinct novels, which essentially defined the police procedural for a half-century. Hunter also wrote the screenplay for Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. He is a Grand Master and was the first American to be given a Diamond Dagger for lifetime achievement by the (British) Crime Writers Association.

If a single writer could be held up to the light as the personification of cool and hip in the 1980s, it was Jay McInerney, who rode to instant stardom with his first book, Bright Lights, Big City. While he has seldom ventured into the world of crime fiction (unless you count drug use and abuse), his short story “Con Doctor” was selected for Best American Mystery Stories 1998.

Even if Bill Clinton had not told the media that Walter Mosley was his favorite mystery writer, the Easy Rawlins series would have been successful. It made its debut with Devil in a Blue Dress, which was nominated for an Edgar and then filmed with Denzel Washington and Jennifer Beals. As one of the most original voices in the world of crime fiction, Mosley has seen such Rawlins novels as Black Betty and A Little Yellow Dog make the New York Times best-seller list. He is a former president of the Mystery Writers of America.

Among the world’s most distinguished living authors, surely Joyce Carol Oates ranks as the greatest not to have won the Nobel Prize, although rumors abound that she has been short-listed several times. She has produced a wide variety of work at a prodigious rate, and it seems unlikely that any living American writer has received more accolades and awards, far too many to list here, but including six National Book Award nominations (including the winner, Them, in 1970) and three finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. Among her most recent books are Take Me, Take Me With You, Rape: A Love Story and The Tattooed Girl.

After writing and being rejected for twenty years, Anne Perry’s first novel, The Cater Street Hangman, was published in 1979. Since then, she has averaged more than a book a year, mainly the beloved Victorian-era detective novels that have put her on the best-seller list. The first series was about Inspector Thomas Pitt and his wife Charlotte, while the second is a darker series about Inspector William Monk. She won an Edgar for her short story, “Heroes,” which featured college professor and chaplain Joseph Reavley, now featured in a new series beginning with No Graves As Yet.

Not many crime writers make it into The Guinness Book of World Records, but Ian Rankin did when he had seven best sellers on the London Times list at the same time. He has won three Daggers from the (British) Crime Writers Association, two for short stories and one for Black and Blue, which was also nominated for an Edgar. His Inspector Rebus novels, beginning with Knots and Crosses in 1987, have served as the basis for a BBC television series. He was also one of the first winners of the prestigious Chandler-Fulbright Award.

S. J. Rozan’s novels about Lydia Chin and Bill Smith are among the most honored of recent years, winning Shamus, Anthony, Macavity and Edgar awards, with Winter and Night winning the Edgar for Best Novel in 2003 to join the statue of Poe she won for best short story. Lydia is a young American-born Chinese private eye whose cases mainly originate in the Chinese community, while Smith is an older, experienced PI who lives above a bar in Tribeca. They work together smoothly in carefully constructed (the author is, after all, an architect) plots, essentially taking turns as the dominant figure from book to book.

These giants of the mystery writing world have put together a bevy, a veritable harem, of dangerous women of all kinds. The gentler sex? Don’t make me laugh. And stay on guard, lest they win your heart, because they’d like to have it. Perhaps with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Otto Penzler

IMPROVISATION

ED MCBAIN

Why don’t we kill somebody?” she suggested. She was a blonde, of course, tall and willowy and wearing a sleek black cocktail dress cut high on the leg and low at the neckline.

“Been there,” Will told her. “Done that.”

Her eyes opened wide, a sharp blue in startling contrast to the black of the dress.

“The Gulf War,” he explained.

“Not the same thing at all,” she said, and plucked the olive from her martini and popped it into her mouth. “I’m talking about murder.”

“Murder, uh-huh,” Will said. “Who’d you have in mind?”

“How about the girl sitting across the bar there?”

“Ah, a random victim,” he said. “But how’s that any different from combat?”

“A specific random victim,” she said. “Shall we kill her or not?”

“Why?” he asked.

“Why not?” she said.

Will had known the woman for perhaps twenty minutes at most. In fact, he didn’t even know her name. Her suggestion that they kill someone had come in response to a standard pickup line he’d used to good effect many times before, to wit: “So what do we do for a little excitement tonight?”

To which the blonde had replied, “Why don’t we kill somebody?”

Hadn’t whispered the words, hadn’t even lowered her voice. Just smiled over the rim of her martini glass, and said in her normal speaking voice, “Why don’t we kill somebody?”

The specific random victim she had in mind was a plain-looking woman wearing a plain brown jacket over a brown silk blouse and a darker brown skirt. There was about her the look of a harried file clerk or lower-level secretary, the mousy brown hair, the unblinking eyes behind what one had to call spectacles rather than eyeglasses, the thin-lipped mouth and slight overbite. A totally unremarkable woman. Small wonder she was sitting alone nursing a glass of white wine.

“Let’s say we do actually kill her,” Will said. “What’ll we do for a little excitement afterward?”

The blonde smiled.

And crossed her legs.

“My name is Jessica,” she said.

She extended her hand.

He took it.

“I’m Will,” he said.

He assumed her palm was cold from the iced drink she’d been holding.

On this chilly December evening three days before Christmas, Will had no intention whatever of killing the mousy little file clerk at the end of the bar, or anyone else for that matter. He had killed his fair share of people a long time ago, thank you, all of them specific random victims in that they had been wearing the uniform of the Iraqi Army, which made them the enemy. That was as specific as you could get in wartime, he supposed. That was what made it okay to bulldoze them in their trenches. That was what made it okay to murder them, whatever fine distinction Jessica was now making between murder and combat.

Anyway, Will knew this was merely a game, a variation on the mating ritual that took place in every singles bar in Manhattan on any given night of the year. You came up with a clever approach, you got a response that indicated interest, and you took it from there. In fact, he wondered how many times, in how many bars before tonight, Jessica had used her “Why don’t we kill somebody?” line. The approach was admittedly an adventurous one, possibly even a dangerous one—suppose she flashed those splendid legs at someone who turned out to be Jack the Ripper? Suppose she picked up a guy who really believed it might be fun to kill that girl sitting alone at the other end of the bar? Hey, great idea, Jess, let’s do it! Which, in effect, was what he’d tacitly indicated, but of course she knew they were just playing a game here, didn’t she? She certainly had to realize they weren’t planning an actual murder here.

“Who’ll make the approach?” she asked.

“I suppose I should,” Will said.

“Please don’t use your ‘What’ll we do for a little excitement tonight?’ line.”

“Gee, I thought you liked that.”

“Yes, the first time I heard it. Five or six years ago.”

“I thought I was being entirely original.”

“Try to be more original with little Alice there, okay?”

“Is that what you think her name is?”

“What do you think it is?”

“Patricia.”

“Okay, I’ll be Patricia,” she said. “Let me hear it.”

“Excuse me, Miss,” Will said.

“Great start,” Jessica said.

“My friend and I happened to notice you sitting all alone here, and we thought you might care to join us.”

Jessica looked around as if trying to locate the friend he was telling Patricia about.

“Who do you mean?” she asked, all wide-eyed and wondering.

“The beautiful blonde sitting right there,” Will said. “Her name is Jessica.”

Jessica smiled.

“Beautiful blonde, huh?” she said.

“Gorgeous blonde,” he said.

“Sweet talker,” she said, and covered his hand with her own on the bar top. “So let’s say little Patty Cake decides to join us. Then what?”

“We ply her with compliments and alcohol.”

“And then what?”

“We take her to some dark alley and bludgeon her to death.”

“I have a small bottle of poison in my handbag,” Jessica said. “Wouldn’t that be better?”

Will narrowed his eyes like a gangster.

“Perfect,” he said. “We’ll take her to some dark alley and poison her to death.”

“Wouldn’t an apartment someplace be a better venue?” Jessica asked.

And it suddenly occurred to him that perhaps they weren’t discussing murder at all, jokingly or otherwise. Was it possible that what Jessica had in mind was a three-way?

“Go talk to the lady,” she said. “After that, we’ll improvise.”

Will wasn’t very good at picking up girls in bars.

In fact, aside from his “What’ll we do for a little excitement tonight?” line, he didn’t have many other approaches in his repertoire. He was emboldened somewhat by Jessica’s encouraging nod from where she sat at the opposite end of the bar, but he still felt somewhat timid about taking the empty stool alongside Alice or Patricia or whatever her name was.

It had been his experience that plain girls were less responsive to flattery than were truly knockout beauties. He guessed that was because they were expecting to be lied to, and were wary of being duped and disappointed yet another time. Alice or Patricia or Whoever proved to be no exception to this general Plain-Jane observation. Will took the stool next to hers, turned to her, and said, “Excuse me, Miss,” exactly as he’d rehearsed it with Jessica, but before he could utter another word, she recoiled as if he’d slapped her. Eyes wide, seemingly surprised, she said, “What? What is it?”

“I’m sorry if I startled you . . .”

“No, that’s all right,” she said. “What is it?”

Her voice was high and whiney, with an accent he couldn’t quite place. Her eyes behind their thick round lenses were a very dark brown, still wide now with either fright or suspicion, or both. Staring at him unblinkingly, she waited.

“I don’t want to bother you,” he said, “but . . .”

“That’s all right, really,” she said. “What is it?”

“My friend and I couldn’t help noticing . . .”

“Your friend?”

“The lady sitting just opposite us. The blonde lady at the other end of the bar?” Will said, and pointed to Jessica, who obligingly raised her hand in greeting.

“Oh. Yes,” she said. “I see.”

“We couldn’t help notice that you were sitting here, drinking alone,” he said. “We thought you might care to join us.”

“Oh,” she said.

“Do you think you might care to? Join us?”

There was a moment’s hesitation. The brown eyes blinked, softened. The slightest smile formed on her thin-lipped mouth.

“I think I would like to, yes,” she said. “I’d like to.”

They sat at a small table some distance from the bar, in a dimly lighted corner of the room. Susan—and not Patricia or Alice, as it turned out—ordered another Chardonnay. Jessica stuck to her martinis. Will ordered another bourbon on the rocks.

“No one should sit drinking alone three days before Christmas,” Jessica said.

“Oh, I agree, I agree,” Susan said.

She had an annoying habit of saying everything twice. Made it sound as if there were an echo in the place.

“But this bar is on my way home,” she said, “and I thought I’d stop in for a quick glass of wine.”

“Take the chill off,” Jessica agreed, nodding.

“Yes, exactly. Take the chill off.”

She also repeated other people’s words, Will noticed.

“Do you live near here?” Jessica asked.

“Yes. Just around the corner.”

“Where are you from originally?”

“Oh dear, can you still tell?”

“Tell what?” Will asked.

“The accent. Oh dear, does it still show? After all those lessons? Oh my.”

“What accent would that be?” Jessica asked.

“Alabama. Montgomery, Alabama,” she said, making it sound like “Mun’gummy, Alabama.”

“I don’t hear any accent at all,” Jessica said. “Do you detect an accent, Will?”

“Well, it’s a regional dialect, actually,” Susan said.

“You sound like you were born right here in New York,” Will said, lying in his teeth.

“That’s so kind of you, really,” she said. “Really, it’s so very kind.”

“How long have you been up here?” Jessica asked.

“Six months now. I came up at the end of June. I’m an actress.”

An actress, Will thought.

“I’m a nurse,” Jessica said.

An actress and a nurse, Will thought.

“No kidding?” Susan said. “Do you work at some hospital?”

“Beth Israel,” Jessica said.

“I thought that was a synagogue,” Will said.

“A hospital, too,” Jessica said, nodding, and turned back to Susan again. “Would we have seen you in anything?” she asked.

“Well, not unless you’ve been to Montgomery,” Susan said, and smiled. “The Glass Menagerie? Do you know The Glass Menagerie? Tennessee Williams? The play by Tennessee Williams? I played Laura Wingate in the Paper Players’ production down there. I haven’t been in anything up here yet. I’ve been waitressing, in fact.”

A waitress, Will thought.

The nurse and I are about to kill the plainest waitress in the city of New York.

Or worse, we’re going to take her to bed.

Afterward, he thought it might have been Jessica who suggested that they buy a bottle of Moët Chandon and take it up to Susan’s apartment for a nightcap, the apartment being so close and all, just around the corner, in fact, as Susan herself had earlier pointed out. Or perhaps it was Will himself who’d made the suggestion, having consumed by then four hefty shots of Jack Daniels, and being somewhat bolder than he might ordinarily have been. Or perhaps it was Susan who invited them up to her place, which was in the heart of the theatrical district, right around the corner from Flanagan’s, where she herself had consumed three or four glasses of Chardonnay and had begun performing for them the entire scene in which the Gentleman Caller breaks the little glass unicorn and Laura pretends it’s no great tragedy, acting both parts for them, which Will felt certain caused the bartender to announce last call a full ten minutes earlier than he should have.

She was some terrible actress.

But oh so inspired!

The minute they hit the street outside, she raised her arms to the heavens above, her fingers widespread, and shouted in her dreadful Southern accent, “Just look at it! Broadway! The Great White Way!” and then did a little sort of pirouette, twirling and dancing up the street, her arms still high over her head.

“My God, let’s kill her quick!” Jessica whispered to Will.

They both burst out laughing.

Susan must have thought they were sharing her exuberance.

Will guessed she didn’t know what lay just ahead.

Or maybe she did.

At this hour of the night, the hookers had already begun their stroll up Eighth Avenue, but none of them so much as lifted an eyebrow to Will, probably figuring he was a John already occupied twice over, one on each arm. In an open liquor store, he bought a bottle of not Moët Chandon but Veuve Clicquot, and they went walking up the avenue together again, arm in arm.

Susan’s apartment was a studio flat on the third floor of a walk-up on Forty-ninth and Ninth. They climbed the steps behind her, and she stopped outside apartment 3A, fiddled for her keys in her handbag, found them at last, and unlocked the door. The place was furnished in what Will called Struggling Young Actress Thrift. A tiny kitchen to the left of the entrance. A double bed against the far wall, a door alongside it leading to what Will supposed was a bathroom. A sofa and two easy chairs and a dresser with a mirror over it. There was a door on the entrance wall, and it opened onto a closet. Susan took their coats and hung them up.

“Mind if I make myself comfortable?” she asked, and went into the bathroom.

Jessica waggled her eyebrows.

Will went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, and emptied two of the ice cube trays into a bowl he found in the overhead cabinets. He also found three juice glasses he supposed would have to serve. Jessica sat on the sofa watching him while he started opening the champagne. A loud pop exploded just as another blonde stepped out of the bathroom.

It took him a moment to realize this was Susan.

“Makeup and costume go a long way toward realizing a character,” she said.

She was now a slender young woman with short straight blonde hair, a nice set of jugs showing in the swooping neckline of a red blouse, a short tight black skirt, good legs in very high-heeled black pumps. She held dangling from her right hand the mousy brown wig she’d been wearing in the bar, and when she opened her left hand and held it out to him, palm flat, he saw the dental prosthesis that had given her the overbite. Through the open bathroom door, he could see her frowzy brown suit hanging on the shower rod. Her spectacles were resting on the bathroom sink.

“Little padding around the waist thickened me out,” she said. “We have all these useful props in class.”

No Southern accent anymore, he noticed. No brown eyes, either.

“But your eyes . . .” he said.

“Contact lenses,” Susan said.

Her real eyes were as blue as . . . well, Jessica’s.

In fact, they could pass for sisters.

He said this out loud.

“You could pass for sisters,” he said.

“Maybe ’cause we are,” Jessica said. “Sure had you going, though, didn’t we?”

“I’ll be damned,” he said.

“Let’s try that champagne,” Susan said, and swiveled into the kitchen where the bottle was now resting in the bowl of ice. She lifted it, poured into the juice glasses, and carried back into the other room the three glasses in a cradle of fingers and thumbs. Jessica plucked one of the glasses free. Susan handed one to Will.

“Here’s to the three of us,” Jessica toasted.

“And improvisation,” Susan added.

They all drank.

Will figured this was going to turn into one hell of a night.

“We’re in the same acting class,” Jessica told him.

She was still sitting on the sofa, legs crossed. Splendid legs. Will was in one of the easy chairs. Susan was in the easy chair opposite him, her legs also crossed, also splendid.

“We both want to be actors,” Jessica explained.

“I thought you were a nurse,” Will said.

“Oh, sure. Same way Sue is a waitress. But our ambition is to act.”

“We’re gonna be stars one day.”

“Our names up in lights on Broadway.”

“The Carter Sisters,” Jessica said.

“Susan and Jessica!” her sister said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Will said.

They all drank again.

“We’re not really from Montgomery, you know,” Jessica said.

“Well, I realize that now. But that certainly was a good accent, Susan.”

“Regional dialect,” she corrected.

“We’re from Seattle.”

“Where it rains all the time,” Will said.

“Oh, that’s not true at all,” Susan said. “Actually it rains less in Seattle than it does in New York, that’s a fact.”

“A statistically proven fact,” Jessica said, nodding in agreement, and draining her glass. “Is there any more bubbly out there?”

“Oh, lots,” Susan said, and shoved herself out of the easy chair, exposing a fair amount of thigh as she got to her feet. Will handed her his empty glass, too. He sure hoped the ladies wouldn’t be drinking too much here. There was some serious business to take care of here tonight, some serious improvisation to do.

“So how long have you been living here in New York?” he ask. . .