January 9 - "The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds"

“The Case of the Four and Twenty Blackbirds”
by Neil Gaiman
M Is for Magic (2007)

* * * (Good) Pulp

There’s been a murder in Nurseryland, and private dick, Jack Horner, is on the case. It wasn’t that the deceased Fat Man – Humpty Dumpty – deserved justice, in fact, he was a real bad egg, but times were tough and the dame, Dumpty’s sister, was a knockout. It is only after the third murder in less than a week, and the mysterious lead about the four and twenty blackbirds, that Horner realizes Dumpty’s sister knows more than she let on when first hiring him to put the pieces together.

I find it amusing that in a collection of stories for younger readers I find a pulp tale of private dicks, dames, hooch and murder. More amusing is the setting and characters. The tale is populated by familiar nursery rhyme folk gone bad. Gaiman does a great job taking these characters and transporting them credibly into a world of shadowy noir. However, the ending was a bit too pat, with clues only sparsely seeded throughout. This is true of a lot of mystery fiction, but only more obvious in a story of shorter length. As a fan of flights of fancy involving fable folk (i.e. the great Fables comic series) and hardboiled detective fiction, I still enjoyed this simple little story of tiny dicks - midget detectives - and bad eggs.