Quote of the Day (Anna Stolley Persky, on an Alarming Note Received in April, 40 Years Ago)

“Esther opened the first note on a Tuesday, on a breezy April afternoon in Northern Virginia. The note—off-white paper, folded twice, addressed in capital letters to ‘The Jews on Elm Street’—had been slipped into the mailbox underneath several bills and a Sears, Roebuck catalog….Sliding the rest of the mail under one arm, Esther opened the note. Inside the note was one thing, just a symbol, and yet not just a symbol, not to Esther and certainly not to her grandmother, who had barely escaped the war. Inside the note was a swastika, intended just for them, the only Jews on Elm Street.”—American lawyer, journalist, and essayist Anna Stolley Persky, “The Jews on Elm Street,” Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, September-October 2024

With all the things requiring my focus these days, I don’t have the time to take in all the detection fiction I want to read. But this short story by Anna Stolley Persky called insistently for my attention from its first few paragraphs.

It’s not just a crime story, but a coming-of-age tale involving 14-year-old Esther, forced to confront mounting, insidious terror few would believe possible in the Northern Virginia suburb Cherry Tree. And—especially relevant now—it’s about the persistence of antisemitism, decades after the US defeated its most dangerous exponent in World War II, and about the ordinary people—even those, like Esther’s beloved grandmother Orly, waning in physical strength—called upon to defend against it again.

The threatening notes in the initial paragraphs of this short story escalate until Orly pieces together the clues to determine who was responsible for sending them. Though it is set in the mid-1980s (there are references to Columbo reruns and to Murder, She Wrote, “a newer show Orly had started watching”), it is all too applicable to America in 2025:

“Here, Orly thought, was a life lesson for Esther. The authorities were not necessarily there to protect THEM. Here was the lesson she never wanted, but always needed her granddaughter to understand. Maybe things changed a little. Certainly, this country was better than others, but eventually it all circled back to the same idea: They would always be struggling against the same prejudices, over and over, generation after generation.”

I greatly enjoyed this, Ms. Persky’s first published fiction—and evidently, I’m far from the only one. It has been named a finalist for the Robert L. Fish Memorial Award for Best First Mystery Story, to be given in early May. I look forward to more work by this fellow Columbo devotee who, like me, believes, as she noted in this guest post for the “Something Is Going to Happen!” blog, in the importance of “character-driven” detective novels.