Deal Me In: Catch-Up Post

 

I'm really struggling to stay on track with Jay's 7th annual Deal Me In Challenge. So, here I am again playing catch-up on my stories.

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Week #40 gave me the three of hearts which matched up to "The Age of Miracles" by Melville Davisson Post: a story which features Post's colorful American sleuth Uncle Abner. Here Uncle Abner saves a young woman from being cheated out of her inheritance by a man using the law to do so.

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In Week #41, I drew the eight of hearts which gave me "The Little Dry Sticks" by Cora Jarrett. A reporter accompanies his host Danby to visit a female friend who wants advice about her property. They arrive to find that the woman's husband has been murdered while they made they chilly way to the house and Mrs. Elderson was showing them the area of property in question. A key phrase by Danby leads the reporter and the police to the culprit.

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Next up in Week #42 was the Queen of Diamonds or "The Locked Room" by John Dickson Carr. Carr is well-known as the master of locked rooms and impossible crimes. This one involves the attempted murder of Francis Seton--hit over the head with a piece of lead-loaded broomhandle and his safe robbed while his secretary and librarian sat outside the only door and the window was locked.

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Week #43 the Ten of Spades "Mount Olympus" by Ben Bova: This is a story about two men who are the first to land on top of the tallest mountain on Mars. What begins as a quest to get their names in the record books becomes a struggle for survival--nobody told them that the carbon dioxide that makes up so much of the atmosphere will freeze on the cold, bare rock, covering it with a dangerous invisible layer of dry ice. They learn much about Mars, but even more about themselves as they have to work together to get back to their ship.

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Week #44 the Four of Hearts "The Witness for the Prosecution" by Agatha Christie. This is Christie's premier courtroom drama. Leonard Vole is accused of murdering an old woman who took him under his wing, but his wife can prove he didn't do it. Or can she? And better yet--if she can, will she?

Hound of the Baskervilles cards!

Week #45 gave me the Five of Hearts and "The  Hound" by William Faulkner. "The Hound" is a grim tale of crime and guilt, not unlike Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart"--only this time Ernest Cotton, a "mild man" driven to murder by bitterness, rage, and fear, is hounded by the victim's dog...

[All but one of the above stories may be found in Murder by Experts by Ellery Queen, ed.' the Ben Bova story may be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction 17th Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois, ed.]

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Week #46 King of Spades: "A Hero of the Empire" by Robert Silverberg is an Alternate History story set in a world where the Roman Empire never fell. Here, a  Roman nobleman is sent as punishment to a remote corner of the Empire--to a city we might recognize in our timeline as Mecca. And we learn how history can sometimes be made or unmade through a chance meeting.

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And now in Week #47, I have drawn the Jack of Diamonds which is "Son Observe the Time" by Kage Baker. A time travel story set in the world of The Company--a group, one of whose functions is to travel to periods of destruction in the history of mankind and salvage works of art and other irreplaceable objects from the wreckage. This particular episode takes us to the days and hours leading up to the great San Francisco Earthquake.

[The last two stories may be found in The Year's Best Science Fiction 17th Annual Collection by Gardner Dozois, ed.]