Mayhem in Memphis

Memphis is a city that uses any excuse to party down.When times were hard after the Civil War, our response was to crank up the blues. When that nasty bug, the Boll Weevil, infested our lush fields of cotton, a group of tricksters put on boll weevil costumes and invaded parties, drank the hosts' bourbon, and danced with the ladies (whether they wanted to or not.)One week mid-May was chosen as a blow-out in praise of cotton and the money it brought to us. With the advent of other crops,...
More Description

Memphis is a city that uses any excuse to party down.When times were hard after the Civil War, our response was to crank up the blues. When that nasty bug, the Boll Weevil, infested our lush fields of cotton, a group of tricksters put on boll weevil costumes and invaded parties, drank the hosts' bourbon, and danced with the ladies (whether they wanted to or not.)One week mid-May was chosen as a blow-out in praise of cotton and the money it brought to us. With the advent of other crops, however, the party became known merely as "Carnival." More recently it has expanded to laud the whole area during May, our last coolish month until October. Even with air conditioning, nobody can celebrate in high summertime down here.The stories in this anthology are centered loosely around this party that has kept our spirits up in one form or another through yellow fever epidemics, boom times and depressions, wartimes and peace times.The writers are members of our local mystery-writers group, Malice in Memphis. We understand that any time you get a big group of people together to go hog wild, there's a perfect opportunity for crime. Each of these tales deals with murder or theft or some other action, polite-and not so polite-that society frowns on. Needless to say, the stories are fiction, and so are all the characters.This is our fourth Malice in Memphis anthology of crime-ridden short stories set around the Memphis bluff. "Mayhem in Memphis" received the Imaginarium Convention's 2020 Imadjinn Award for Best Anthology.