What led me to pick it up was a story by Liz Hufford, a good writer whose "This Offer Expires" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, September 1976) had stuck with me, and who had published only three rather well-regarded stories in 1970s fantastic-fiction media (one in Damon Knight's anthology series Orbit, two in F&SF) after passing through the Clarion Writers Workshop...she had continued to publish in various little magazines and aAcademic texts occasionally since, while also teaching at Glendale Community College in Arizona. "Gone Accourting" is unsurprisingly one of the better stories in the issue, a rumination on life and particularly the judicial system while also an account of someone not too unlike Hufford herself being called to serve on a jury; as someone who, while living in Philadelphia proper some years back, was called to jury duty something like eleven times while never being empaneled, I could sympathize. (This is one of a few stories in the issue that might put the reader particularly in mind of John D. MacDonald.) Jack Ewing, an old hand who hasn't ever made a huge splash in a long career, has a deft story in "Serves You Right" that easily could fit in any neo-noir context, about why a process server might not wish to pursue his white whale; Randall Patterson's "Old Soldiers" is similarly informed by a long career in both writing and the law, and might be the best story here. Tom Green's "Huntz's Law" might be a bit over-broad, in its account of a judge still rankled with envy of some of his law-school classmates, and seeking one big splashy case to preside over; judges similarly have not so great times of it in Juliet Hubble's "Amicus, Briefly" (a quick portrait of an unfulfilled if useful life) and Anthony Mohr's "Affirmed," where an accomplished jurist in her middle years is treating with the emotional fallout of her father, going into his final spiral, not being capable of recognizing anything but his own vision of how his children's lives should be (not altogether convincingly, I'd say about this story, but I can sympathize with the situation). Michael Del Muro gives us an account of a journalist's crisis of conscience; Tony Press of a trial lawyer's first case on her own, both effective stories. Among the poetry, I liked Kristin Roedell's narrative "Family Law" best among a good lot. As a whole, an interesting gathering of crime literature that doesn't feel so much alien as simply having a slightly different emphasis from the typical issue of a cf magazine or the usual anthology in the field.
Contents:
Bench Book by Charles Reynard
Mother, With Child by Tony Press
Family Law by Kristin Roedell
Matt the Closer by Jeffrey A. Dickerson
The Barrister by John Lambremont, Sr.
Old Soldiers by Randall Patterson
Pled by Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow
Serves You Right by Jack Ewing
Leaving the Station by Michael Del Muro
Gone Accourting by Liz Hufford
retainers by Joseph A. Farina
criminal courtroom by Joseph A. Farina
principles of sentencing (juvenile court) by Joseph A. Farina
transubstantiation by Joseph A. Farina
Affirmed by Anthony J. Mohr
May it Please the Court by Leslie B. Neustadt
Amicus, Briefly by Juliet Hubbell
Reading the PSI by Charles Reynard
Huntz's Law by Tom Green
Lord Coke Unbenched by Dan Gunter
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