Review: "The Longest December" by Richard Chizmar

 

“The Longest December” by Richard Chizmar Cemetery Dance, 2023   Richard Chizmar’s crime novella, “The Longest December”—which is a revised and expanded version of Chizmar’s 2016 story, “A Long December”—is an original and inventive take on the serial killer tale. Bob Howard is a middle-aged sales rep living the suburban dream with a son in college and his marriage, to the beautiful Katy, comfortable and rewarding. But his carefully curated life is shattered when a detective knocks on his door on an early December morning asking about Bob’s best friend and next-door neighbor, James Wilkinson. Wilkinson, a part-time history lecturer at a local University, is suspected in a series of killings dating back years. Bob and Katy insist the police have made a mistake. Wilkinson has been their neighbor for eight years and he is their son’s honorary godfather. And he, Wilkinson, has never shown any behavior to suggest he may be a killer. Of course, Wilkinson has disappeared—which makes him look guilty—and the news media pick up the story with frenzied zeal. “The Longest December” is a bullet of a crime thriller with a psychological element—could Wilkinson have played Bob and Katy for so long, and would he come back and hurt them now?—wrapped in a tense and atmospheric narrative. Chizmar’s sense of pacing is alarmingly perfect but the tale’s essence is the intrinsic suspense as the reader watches Bob circle the truth of what James Wilkinson truly is, on both an emotional and intellectual level, moving from denial to fear and then to something altogether different. “The Longest December” is a thrilling tale with a little Alfred Hitchcock and the film Seven blended into Chizmar’s own secret sauce. And it really works! “The Longest December” was published as one-half of a “double” with Stephen King and Stewart O’Nan’s story, “A Face in the Crowd.”

Check out A Face in the Crowd / The Longest December at Amazon—click here for the hardcover.

Review: "Brothers" by Ed Gorman & Richard Chizmar

“Brothers” By Ed Gorman & Richard Chizmar Short, Scary Tales, 2015   “Brothers”—which is a novelette-length expansion of Ed Gorman’s 2006 short story—is a dark tale about brotherhood and loss. Brothers Chet and Michael’s mother died when they were teenagers and their father, a cop and a drunk, was emotionally absent from their lives. Chet, the oldest of the two, essentially raised Michael and as an adult, Chet can’t let go of his perceived responsibility: he has always been there to rescue Michael from his darker self. Chet was there to help Michael escape gambling and alcohol addictions. He facilitated Michael’s hiring as a Chicago cop, and even found him a wholesome wife. So when Michael starts backsliding into his old ways, Chet steps in once again to save his younger brother. “Brothers” is an example of what Ed Gorman did so well: dark, melancholy tales inhabited by characters as real as our own neighbors, friends, siblings, and spouses with a subtle pre-destination that—no matter how hard the characters struggle and plan—will lead them to ruin. But Ed never wrote pure noir and “Brothers” is no exception. He counterbalanced the bleak themes with low-key humor and made his flawed regular-man characters worthwhile by endowing them with a realistic complexity and contradiction. As I noted above, “Brothers” is an expansion of an earlier story, which was published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. I’ve read both the original and the expanded versions   and Richard Chizmar, who I believe was responsible for the expansion, added a significant amount of narrative, including an interesting childhood event that gives the reader a better understanding of Michael. While the original short story is excellent and worth reading, this collaboration is even better. If you can find “Brothers” anywhere, do yourself a favor and read it.

Go here for the out-of-print paperback edition of “Brothers” at Amazon.