Vengeance: Mystery Writers of America Presents

ALSO BY LEE CHILD

Killing Floor

Die Trying

Tripwire

Running Blind

Echo Burning

Without Fail

Persuader

The Enemy

One Shot

The Hard Way

Bad Luck and Trouble

Nothing to Lose

Gone Tomorrow

61 Hours

Worth Dying For

The Affair

ALSO FROM THE MYSTERY WRITERS OF AMERICA

The Blue Religion

(edited by Michael Connelly)

Death Do Us Part

(edited by Harlan Coben)

The Prosecution Rests

(edited by Linda Fairstein)

CONTENTS

Introduction by Lee Child

THE FOURTEENTH JUROR by Twist Phelan

LOST AND FOUND by Zoe Sharp

THE MOTHER by Alafair Burke

BLIND JUSTICE by Jim Fusilli

THE CONSUMERS by Dennis Lehane

MOONSHINER’S LAMENT by Rick McMahan

RIVER SECRET by Anne Swardson

HOT SUGAR BLUES by Steve Liskow

THE FINAL BALLOT by Brendan DuBois

AFRICA ALWAYS NEEDS GUNS by Michael Niemann

THE UNREMARKABLE HEART by Karin Slaughter

IT AIN’T RIGHT by Michelle Gagnon

SILENT JUSTICE by C. E. Lawrence

EVEN A BLIND MAN by Darrell James

THE GENERAL by Janice Law

A FINE MIST OF BLOOD by Michael Connelly

LEVERAGE by Mike Cooper

THE HOTLINE by Dreda Say Mitchell

BLOOD AND SUNSHINE by Adam Meyer

IN PERSONA CHRISTI by Orest Stelmach

THE HOLLYWOOD I REMEMBER by Lee Child

About the Authors

Copyrights

INTRODUCTION

Editing this anthology was a lot of fun — not least because Mystery Writers of America’s invaluable and irreplaceable publications guy, Barry Zeman, did all the hard work. All I had to do was pick ten invitees. And write a story. And then later on read the ten winning stories chosen by MWA’s blind-submission process. Piece of cake. Apart from writing my own story, that is, which I always find hard, but that’s why picking the invitees was so much fun — I love watching something difficult being done really well, by experts.

It was like playing fantasy baseball — who did I want on the field? And just as Major League Baseball has rich seams of talent to choose from, so does Mystery Writers of America. I could have filled ten anthologies. Or twenty. But I had to start somewhere — and it turned out that I already had, years ago, actually, when I taught a class at a mystery writers’ conference in California. One of the after-hours activities was a group reading around a fireplace in the motel. A bit too kumbaya for me, frankly, but I went anyway, and the first story was by a young woman called Michelle Gagnon. It was superb, and it stayed with me through the intervening years. So I e-mailed her about using it for this anthology — more in hope than in expectation, because it was such a great story, I was sure it had been snapped up long ago. But no — it was still available. Never published, amazingly. It is now.

One down.

Then I had to have Brendan DuBois. He’s a fine novelist but easily the best short-story writer of his generation. He just cranks them out, one after the other, like he’s casting gold ingots. Very annoying. He said yes.

Two down.

And I had Twist Phelan on my radar. She’s a real woman of mystery — sometimes lives on a yacht, sometimes lives in Switzerland, knows about oil and banks and money — and she had just won the International Thriller Writers’ award for best short story. I thought, I’ll have a bit of that. She said okay.

Three down.

Then there was the overtalented but undersung Jim Fusilli. He wrote two great New York novels that I really loved, and then four more just as good, and he’s the rock music critic for the Wall Street