Loves big and small, crimes forgiven or avenged. These are the themes that drive the eleven diverse stories in this new collection of psychological suspense from storyteller V.S. Kemanis.
Meet the husband and wife team Rosemary and Reuben, master chefs known to sprinkle a dash of magic into every dish. Lucille Steadman, a dazed retiree who can’t explain why she’s left her husband, only to discover, too late, the meaning of love and commitment in the most surprising place. Franklin DeWitt, an esteemed ballet critic who witnesses—or abets?—a bizarre criminal plot to topple a beautiful Soviet ballerina. Rosalyn Bleinstorter, a washed-up defense attorney whose stubborn belief in her own street savvy leads her unwittingly into a romantic and criminal association with an underworld figure.
These are just a few of the colorful characters you’ll get to know in these pages, where all is fair in love and crime. While the endings to these tales are not always sweet or predictable, and self-deception is rarely rewarded, the lessons come down hard and are well learned.
Love and Crime includes stories originally published in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, The Crooked Road Vol. 3, Lynx Eye, The William and Mary Review, and Iconoclast.
Starred Review
In this book of 11 compelling short stories, the author writes about human nature and how a person’s need for love can lead him or her to make questionable choices.
Thematically the stories have similarities but no two are alike. In one, a ballet critic whose brief infatuation with a ballerina who is a Russian defector inadvertently betrays his long-time friend. In another, a disgraced lawyer falls in love with a rich, charming man, unwilling to see his real motives through her own romantic haze. In a third, a group of college kids in the free-wheeling early ‘70s must live with the unexpected consequences of the Vietnam draft lottery.
V.S. Kemanis is a strong writer, clearly drawing from her experiences as a former prosecutor and ballet dance aficionado. Readers will find her characters highly relatable, as she recounts situations that many have experienced in some way, such as a young jury member who refuses to be bullied into convicting a man just because others on the jury want to go home. Or, an older woman who leaves her long-time marriage after a lifetime of annoyances such as the way her husband rattles a bag of cheese popcorn while looking for kernels at the bottom. Or, the conference attendee who is talking to acquaintances from conferences past, only to find herself left behind as everyone takes a seat in the crowded dining room. “At the threshold, my conversation buddies abandon me for saved spots, leaving me with a smile plastered on my face.”
Although the characters here vary in age, the book would be most suited to somewhat older readers—those who know something about shame, guilt, love and the ethical choices one faces every day. And because many of the stories’ endings are ambiguous, they would make excellent fodder for book club discussion. But any reader with a love of fine writing in short story format should find pieces to savor among these well-written offerings.
Clarion Rating: 5 Stars
Anyone who appreciates supple writing and fine storytelling will enjoy every minute spent reading these stories.
Eleven compulsively readable short stories reach beyond the collection’s title in V. S. Kemanis’s Love and Crime.
The pieces are arranged in three categories—Love, Crime, and Love and Crime—yet their themes are varied and their plots refreshingly unpredictable. Love, crime, or both may set events in motion, but the true subject matter is always the complicated and often contradictory nature of being human.
In the lead story, “Rosemary and Reuben,” a gourmand can taste every ingredient in a dish but is oblivious to what’s really missing in his life. In “Collector’s Find,” a streetwise defense attorney finds herself romantically—and possibly criminally—entangled with an organized crime figure.
Characters throughout the collection are consistently well drawn, with enough quirks and characteristics to emerge as fully rounded and credible people. They do not always act admirably or even rationally, and their foibles are often self-defeating, yet they are sympathetic and likely to garner empathy rather than puzzlement or derision.
“The Zephyr” depicts the awkwardness of a newly blended family, capturing the perspective of a young girl whose well-meaning parents struggle to establish a new normal. Half wisecracking and half sullen in responding to the adult world around her, the narrator’s observations crackle with the pain and feverish anxiety of early adolescence.
A good deal of the pleasure in the collection comes from the writing itself. Kemanis knows how to build a story and keep it going. Many pieces begin with opening lines that raise questions that the reader wants immediate answers to.
The first line of “Weeping Willow”—“An autumn morning in my fortieth year marked the delayed start to my life”—triggers a desire to know why the character is just getting around to the business of living. A few stories end on hauntingly ambiguous notes. Despite its hopeful title, “Cactus Flower” ends inconclusively, with a sense of foreboding as to what may lie ahead.
In one of the collection’s richest pieces, “Journal Entry, Franklin DeWitt,” the narrator sets out to tell the truth about an infamous crime in the insular world of ballet—yet skeptical readers may wonder if the narrator himself knows the full truth of the story.
In each story, details are revealed little by little, and few but well-chosen descriptors are a delight to read, as when the adequate but unspectacular partner of a truly brilliant prima ballerina is dismissed as “the handsome coatrack.”
Three brief pieces are included in an epilogue. They read as a mash-up of a blog and autobiography, and seem out of place within the collection.
Readers expecting the technicolor gore and murderous passion implied by the collection’s title may be disappointed, but anyone who appreciates supple writing and fine storytelling will enjoy every minute spent reading the stories in Love and Crime.
