Noir, crime, and mystery short stories, scholarship, and so much more
The light turned red while the driver regaled her passengers with details of Ramon Novarro’s torture-murder. That’s why the Kick The Bucket Tour’s roofless matte-black van lurched so late from Laurel Canyon, where Novarro lived, into the tangle of westbound traffic on Sunset and forced a motorcycle cop to swerve into the next lane. Oops, […]
Read More “The Kick The Bucket Tour” by Jo PerryElla flounced from the theatre, her diamond earrings scattering angry slivers of red light down the deserted street. Not a cab in sight. Not at this hour; not in this part of town. He’d planned it that way. She stomped one glittery Louboutin against the curb and turned on the lanky man hovering at her […]
Read More “XXX Marks the Spot” by J.L. DelozierThis piece is shared in memory of Greg Teetsell. “Oh, darling!” she exclaimed. Her blue eyes lit bright, lips tinted pink like an old photograph. “Wasn’t tomorrow wonderful?” Sparkling confetti fell through the air. “Wasn’t it just extraordinary?” They were dancing on top of the world. Band music played softly in the background. The moment […]
Read More “Wasn’t Tomorrow Wonderful?” by Melanie DanteOn the circles, green statues ride like South American liberators above the breeding vegetation—Robert Lowell, “July in Washington” I. Walking down the steep hill from the Washington Monument toward Centre Street, Kilo and I descend into a steamy tunnel of heat. July in Baltimore. John Eager Howard and the Marquis de Lafayette bushwhack green […]
Read More “Green Men on Horseback in Baltimore” by Clarinda HarrisPart 1 This was supposed to be a simple lookup. A “lookup” was the general name for the work I did. People called or emailed the library almost everyday asking me to do research. Even though I couldn’t always find the answers they wanted, I was duty-bound to try. I was the local history librarian […]
Read More “The Orth-Daly Case” by Ben HimmelfarbCharlie Miner wakes up looking down at his body on a gurney at the LA County morgue. When he moves closer to the body, it pulls him in and he is able to make it get up and walk around. Charlie, a down-on-his-luck, heroin-addicted insurance fraud investigator, leaves the morgue with two priorities: to get […]
Read More “Down Solo” [excerpt] by Earl JavorskyI’ll always remember Laura as the woman who made one of the hardest summers of my life harder. It wasn’t enough that the nation-wide recession took its toll on our town and that the restaurant at which I’d been bartending was forced to close, due to lack of business; that I had to turn to […]
Read More “The Hard Summer That Laura Made Harder” by Brian GreeneDetective Munatsi watched the electric gate whir shut in her rear-view mirror. It was way too slow. In a city where criminals were given to tailgating, that could be the difference between being robbed or getting away in time. Then again, one often noticed the tell-tale dents on the passenger doors of rich people’s Mercs […]
Read More “The Best A Man Can Get” by T.L. HuchuThe kinds of turbulence people leave behind when they pass through the waters of our lives differ in wild ways. There are those wakes which die out soon, unnoticed when they reach land, and those which make a brief series of rapid spectacular splashes against the rocks, disappearing soon after. There are wakes though, from […]
Read More “Wakes” by D.V. BennettAfter the knife slipped out of my hand, I fumbled for my belt buckle and pulled the thin strip of leather through the loops, screaming to keep myself conscious. The pain. The terror. I didn’t know which was worse or really care. All I knew for sure was I had to stop the bleeding or […]
Read More “Roadkill” by Stephen D. Rogers