{"id":10383,"date":"2023-04-11T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10383"},"modified":"2023-04-10T21:28:48","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T01:28:48","slug":"well-be-right-back-after-this-crime-short-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10383","title":{"rendered":"We’ll Be Right Back — After This! Crime Short Stories"},"content":{"rendered":"
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When you\u2019re not in the mood to tackle a whole novel, reading a short story or two, or twelve, can fill the bill. This collection from Murderous Ink Press titled We\u2019ll Be Right Back\u2014After This!<\/a><\/em> is a good one to keep on hand for just those situations. The mostly U.S. tales are geographically wide-ranging and twisty. Several display a good bit of humor, a couple are on the cozy side while some aim for noir, and the range is suggested by the three selected for longer treatment below. We start our underbelly tour on the U.S. west coast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBlood on the Stairs\u201d by Jim Guigli features his character, Sacramento, California\u2019s down-at-heels private eye Bart Lasiter. A woman dies on the stairway of his office building, apparently on her way to see him. She was fatally stabbed by one of Bart\u2019s own promotional pencils, bearing the painfully ironic slogan, \u201cI\u2019m ready to help.\u201d The Chicago woman was attending an annual Crime Happens conference. You can tell Guigli has paid his dues at such events by the way he describes the posturing, self-promotion, back-biting\u2014it\u2019s all there. The story moves along steadily toward the deadline the Lasiter and the cops face\u2014solving the case before the conference ends and the participants scatter across the country. Where, if the other stories in this collection are any indication, more crimes await.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCruel as the Grave\u201d by Eve Fisher is a story about relationships\u2014bad ones, of course, set in a remote area of South Dakota. The story has so many twists and turns, I didn\u2019t see the end coming at all. Jackie is the pivot around which two other women revolve: one a lawyer, the other a hedonist. They\u2019re uneasy with each other and for good reason. What I really liked about Fisher\u2019s story were the unexpected motivations of the characters that made the ending so believable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three of the stories originated outside the United States. In \u201cA Long Dark Road,\u201d by Canadian author Joan Hall Hovey, an elderly widow traveling a lonely road at night meets an unexpected fate. Yorkshire author Madeleine McDonald writes about a spurned woman who frames her errant lover for her own death in \u201cWatching Over You.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, \u201cMemindip Solves a Problem\u201d by Jay Andrew Connor takes place in an unnamed African country. Memindip is a ghost (?) who avenges wrongful deaths. One evening, he returns to life in a jazz nightclub where a beautiful woman sings. The lights go out. A shot. The lights come on, the singer is dead. The atmosphere of the seedy club, the heat of the crowded city, and especially the tenor of Memindip\u2019s conversations with his taxi driver reinforce the story\u2019s foreign locale. Memindip discovers that the singer wasn\u2019t killed by a bullet, but a good-sized pearl. Such a riveting image! Altogether, a charming tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longer review, covering all this publication\u2019s excellent stories, is available at CrimeFictionLover.com<\/a>. Order here from Amazon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When you\u2019re not in the mood to tackle a whole novel, reading a short story or two, or twelve, can fill the bill. This collection from Murderous Ink Press titled We\u2019ll Be Right Back\u2014After This! is a good one to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Crime short stories from across the U.S. and some foreign climes. A fun collection!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,126,120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-reading-2","category-short-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Ht","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10385,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10383\/revisions\/10385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}