Thursday, May 18, 2017

Deal Me In Week #19: "Pink Bait"


I'm still working my way through Jay's Deal Me In Challenge . In a nutshell--we line up 52 short stories for the year, we match those stories up to a card in a regular deck of card, and each week we shuffle our deck (of real cards) and draw a card from whatever remains in the deck. Last week I drew the Two of Clubs which corresponds to "Pink Bait" by Octavus Roy Cohen (from The World's Best One Hundred Detective Stories Vol. 7 edited by Eugene Thwing. And, though I got it read last week, I'm just now logging it.

 
Emanuel José’s hand-carved giant playing cards

"Pink Bait" finds master criminal Thomas Matlock Braden in my home state of Indiana. Braden isn't just your average Moriarty-type of master criminal--directing vast nefarious organizations. He works alone, but handles "only tasks which require extraordinary finesse, infinite patience and an all-embracing knowledge of human nature." When he comes into possession of a purloined necklace of perfectly matched pink pearls, he travels to a resort in Indiana to look for the perfect "mark" upon which to work his magic. Because if anyone can sell an unsaleable stolen necklace, it's Thomas Matlock Braden.

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