LIA MATERA. “Dead Drunk.” Laura Di Palma. First published in Guilty As Charged, edited by Scott Turow ( Pocket, paperback, 1996). First collected in Counsel for the Defense and Other Stories, Five Star, hardcover, 2000). Reprinted in Year’s 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories: Sixth Annual Edition edited by  Joan Hess, Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg (Carroll & Graf, 1997); in Shamus Winners, Volume II: 1996-2009, edited by Robert J. Randisi (Perfect Crime Books, softcover, 2010; and in A Century of Noir, edited by Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins, New American Library, 2002). Winner of the  PWA Shamus Award for Best Short Story, 1997.

   There is a small problem with the credentials for this story, not really a serious one, unless you would to argue more about it than I do. Laura Di Palma, the protagonist in this tale is a lawyer, not a PI, but the PWA decided that the job she does in it is close enough to qualify. (See the fact that it won a Shamus Award for that year;s Best Story.)

   She is, in fact, hired by a client who fears that he is sbout to be arrested for the deaths of a number of homeless men. There has been a sequence of four of them, all found frozen to death in the park after having been doused with water while asleep there on very cold nights.

   Since she hasn’t made enough money to pay the PI who works for her, she has to do all of the legwork on her own. It’s not a long story, and the story has all the credentials for it to be considered as being seriously better than average tale (see above), but I have a quibble anyway. I think her finding the killer is more a lucky accident on her part than by doing any significant amount of deduction — not that clues and deduction are necessary in a PI story, I have to admit.

   And Lia Matera is a good writer. I think you may gobble this story down in no time flat anyway. As I did.