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Michael Bracken’s “A Matter of Policy”

Mike Shayne Feb. 1985

Excerpt from Michael Bracken’s interview for The Digest Enthusiast No. 8:

TDE: Another Shayne story, “A Matter of Policy,” about a crooked claims adjuster, is tightly plot-ted, with elements that all come together by the story’s end. Are you a plotter or pantser? What’s your writing process today and how has it evolved over the years?

MB: I had to reread “A Matter of Policy” because I didn’t remember it, and I was pleasantly surprised how well the story holds up after all these years.

Alas, nothing in my notes reminds me how this story came together, so I’ll talk more generally about my process.

I am a combination plotter and pantser—a plantser, if you will. Many of my stories begin when I write an opening scene that introduces a character or characters and an inciting incident. Too often, that’s all I have. Then the story sits—sometimes a few days, but occasionally several years—before
I return to it. I may then plot the next few scenes or the entire balance of the story before continuing the writing. So, I often begin a story as a pantser and finish it as a plotter.

Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Vol. 49 No. 2 Feb. 1985
Contents
Hal Blythe & Charles Sweet writing as Brett Halliday “The Quick and the Dead”
Mike Taylor “The ‘B’ Murders”
Stewart Street “Music Man”
Joseph A. Sekelsky “The Charm Bracelet”
Mel Washburn “Sweet Sister”
Alan Warren “Smithereens”
Michael Bracken “A Matter of Policy”
Richard Connolly’s Purloined Letter (art quiz)
Lane Marsh “A Delicate Situation”
John Ball’s Stiff Competition (book reviews)
Best By Mail (classifieds)

Publishers: Edward & Anita Goldstein
Editor: Charles E. Fritch
Art Director: Robin Schaffer
Founder: Leo Margulies
Cover: Pecoraro
5.25” x 7.75” 130 pages $1.75

Michael Bracken: Excerpt from the Interview

MSMM Oct. 1983

In his interview for The Digest Enthusiast No. 8, Michael Bracken gives us the background on one of his early stories:

“Vengeance to Show in the Third,” my first appearance in Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (October 1983), was heavily influenced by reading a great many Dick Francis novels, and I was clearly trying to write an American Dick Francis story. At the time I wrote the story, I lived in southern Illinois, near a racetrack where I placed several losing bets, but I had a personal connection as well. My first wife grew up riding English and, through connections made in that environment, knew people who owned race horses, and she briefly worked as a groom.

In a way, that describes how I do a fair bit of my research: use personal connections. If I don’t have the necessary personal experience and I can’t find what I need with an Internet search, I reach out to friends and family. Additionally, other writers are a great resource, and I have tapped them for information about Catholicism, the odor of a fired handgun, and the like.

Michael Shayne No. 2

Michael Shayne No. 2

Contents
Brett Halliday “The Body Went to Bed”
Octavus Roy Cohen “One Minute After Murder”
Norman Struber “Clean Sweep”
William Campbell Gault “Kill If You Have To”
Hal Ellson “The Rites of Death”
Robert E. Byrum “Papa Knows Best”
Tedd Thomey “Blood On His Boots”
C.B. Gilford “Guest for Breakfast”
Fletcher Flora “Late Date with Death”
Theodore L. Thomas “The Man Nobody Saw”
Lex Sutton “Twin Killing”

Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Vol. 1 No. 2 Oct. 1956
Publisher: Leo Margulies
Editor: Sam Merwin Jr.
Managing Editor: Cylvia Kleinman
Production: Joan Sherman
5.25” x 7.75” 160 pages 35¢

Michael Shayne No. 1

Michael Shayne No. 1

“I am both proud and gratified that my long-time and valued friend, Leo Margulies, is the publisher and sole owner of this magazine. It is a project that both Leo and I have held in our minds and hearts for many years.” –Brett Halliday

Contents
Brett Halliday “Bring Back a Corpse!”
Craig Rice “The Quiet Life” (John J. Malone)
Robert Bloch “Water’s Edge”
Charles Irving “You Wash, and I’ll Dry”
Hal Ellson “Walk Away Fast”
Kenneth Fearing “Three Wives Too Many”
John E. Hasty “Unfinished Business”
Louis Trimble “A Pitch for Murder”
Carter Sprague “A Present for Peter”
Matthew Lee “Home Ground”
Norman Daniels “Rooftop”

Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine Vol. 1 No. 1 Sept. 1956
Publisher: Leo Margulies
Editor: Sam Merwin Jr.
Managing Editor: Cylvia Kleinman
5.25” x 7.75” 160 pages 35¢

Mike Shayne Aug. 1984

Mike Shayne Aug. 1984

Excerpt from Michael Bracken’s interview in The Digest Enthusiast No. 8, June 2018:

TDE: Your secret agent character, Christian Gunn, appeared in Mike Shayne (Aug. 1984) and again in Espionage (Feb. 1985). Was he ever used again?

MB: The fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of both Espionage and Mike Shayne ended Gunn’s career.


Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Vol. 48 No. 8 Aug. 1984
Contents
Brett Halliday “Shadows of the Past”
Amy E. Dean: How Crime Plays
Peter A. Sellers “Loss of a Faculty”
Buzz Dixon “Spiders”
Michael Bracken “With Extreme Prejudice”
Ray Bradley “The Bus Bandits”
Arthur Moore “Bird Bank Bingo”
Lane Marsh “First Security”
Mel Washburn “To Forgive is Human”
Richard E. Givan “The Curious Case of the Dead-Drunk Driver”
Ardath Mayhar “Knit Lady”
Vicki Shaull Carleton “The Prison Letters”
Mike’s Mail
Best by Mail (classified ads)

Publishers: Edward & Anita Goldstein
Editor: Charles E. Fritch
Art Director: Robin Schaffer
Founder: Lou Margulies
5.25” x 7.75” 130 pages $1.75

Michael Bracken Interview

TDE8 pages

Award-winning author and copywriter, Michael Bracken, delivers a terrific 17-page interview for The Digest Enthusiast book eight. Michael is the author of over 1,200 short stories and several novels. He garnered the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement in short mystery fiction in 2016. Shown here is the opening spread that kicks off the discussion that includes career highlights, writing tips and techniques, and comments on his stories from Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, Espionage, Weird Menace, AHMM, Mystery Weekly Magazine, EQMM, Needle, Down & Out: The Magazine, Black Cat Mystery Magazine, and others. TDE8 is coming soon.

Note: Photography by Amber Bracken.