Humor Noir Mystery

Spring is in the air. Gus is feeling pretty good about the change in seasons until an unknown man decides he would rather change from being alive to being dead. He clearly drank something toxic, and it didn’t agree with him. The question is, did he really decide to do that, or did someone make that decision for him. Only that question is buried under a lot of other layers of questions. Why did the man visit Gus a few days before his death proclaiming the end times were near? Why didn’t he take enough poison to kill him near instantly instead of lingering around for days slowly dying? ...

Gus is having one of the best things a man that works in law enforcement can have, a very slow day. His slow day only gets better when he discovers that an ice cream shop is opening near the law enforcement complex. Even though the ice cream shop only serves gelato, that’s not enough to spoil his good mood on this slow day. The only real way his slow day could get ruined was if someone mysteriously dropped dead in the yoga studio across the street from the ice cream shop while at nearly the same time Father Xavier volunteered him to speak at the weekly Tuesday prayer breakfast at town ...

A man with dark thoughts on his mind is racing along the remote snowy roads of Hurmevaara in Finland when there is flash in the sky and something crashes into the car. That something turns about to be a highly valuable meteorite. With euro signs lighting up the eyes of the locals, the unexpected treasure is temporarily placed in a neighbourhood museum, under the watchful eye of a priest named Joel.

It’s been seven years since Gloomy Knob landed in the Ted Stevens High-Security Federal Penitentiary and five years since the end of the war, the one North Korea started when they sent a missile to Cold Storage, Alaska. Serving a life sentence for the murder of his sister, Gloomy spends his time trying to forget about the past. Then one day, Gloomy is snatched from his off-site work station. Instead of celebrating his newfound freedom, Gloomy comes unmoored - he feels he belongs in prison. But his kidnappers believe Gloomy knows where a second nuclear warhead is hidden.

Benjamin Rose's demise began on the day his son's tortoise committed suicide. Ten days later he apprehensively walks into a city centre hotel, his emotions agonisingly teased by the cool evening breeze on the back of his thighs and the surreal sensation of a pleated mini skirt nuzzling into the top of his stockings. Approaching the gleaming doors of the hotel elevator, he hesitates, his hand fidgeting nervously with his blonde wig, frantically summoning the courage to manoeuvre his debilitating red stilettos inside. As the lift begins to ascend, Benjamin closes his eyes and thinks of his ...

Private investigator Gary Maddox scratches out a living doing personal injuries surveillance. A mother asks him to find out who killed her drug-dealer son. The son deserved to die. But the mother deserves justice and offers Gary a lot of money. Soon he's battling drug dealers, corrupt cops, hit-men and murderers. They try to rub him out. But he's well-armed, and not dead yet.

Inspired by vintage Film Noir and Alfred Hitchcock, enjoy this eclectic collection of short stories regarding clumsy attempts at retribution or retaliation, also known as a bit of comeuppance. Come on, everybody has that urge now and then. BTW: resemblance of these characters to ANY colleagues of friends (past or present) is PURELY coincidental! (No, really!). Stories include: OFF THE BEATEN PATH: A bickering couple and a robbery that goes from bad to worse . . . to unexpected. LIVING DOLL(Badgers and Colors): A little girl, a doll who looks like her and people who don’t seem to notice ...

Rhoda West is Silicon Valley’s favorite female CEO: the luminously charismatic founder of the fast-growing startup Radical, a wellness company whose core mission is the betterment of women’s lives. Rhoda’s Instagram page offers intimate glimpses of her personal life alongside promotions for the cult-status products developed in the Well, Radical’s secretive lab.

A PRIVATE EYE IS WARNED OFF A CASE HE DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT! Alton Rhode was sitting in his office minding his business when a gunman walked in and shot up the place. He told the private eye he would come back and kill him, if he pursued the Frank Pace case. Since Rhode didn't know anyone named Frank Pace, and in fact had no clients at the time, he wasn't really worried about what was an obvious case of mistaken Identity. But later, a nun walked in and said she was looking for her brother, Frank Pace. He was about to hire Rhode but had been murdered, and his body misplaced. Then, things really...

Coalville is on fire—from below. The old mines are burning, and everyone has poison gas in their brain. Maybe that’s why the town is so corrupt. Now that he’s a Benedictine monk, Tommy Martini never wants to see the place again—hell-raisers there hold a grudge till they die, and he’s on their wish list. But a girl he once loved has gone missing, and his best friend from childhood has been murdered. Among the living is a shy girl from Tommy’s past, who wants to help. Together, they learn the secret of the elephant’s graveyard, and it’s not in Africa.

Looking into the "suicide" of his lover's ex-husband sounds like a hairball to a private investigator. But he never imagined it could get him killed! Alton Rhode travels to San Francisco to investigate an alleged suicide and winds up ensnared in a web of cryptocurrency-fueled murder and international intrigue! The private eye knows a lot about murder and almost nothing about bitcoins. But he soon gets educated about the latter with the help of an unorthodox but brilliant young woman. And his own expertise comes in very handy when he runs into a bunch of Russians and Chinese whose motives ...

Cold Storage, Alaska, is a remote fishing outpost where salmonberries sparkle in the morning frost and where you just might catch a King Salmon if you're Zen enough to wait for it. Settled in 1935 by Norse fishermen who liked to skinny dip in its natural hot springs, the town enjoyed prosperity in the mid-20th century, at the height of the frozen fish boom. But now the cold storage plant is all but abandoned and the population is shrinking every day.

Meet Tommy Martini, the monk with an anger management problem. His meditations are interrupted by a legacy from his uncle, a crooked priest. Arriving in a New Age Arizona town to claim his inheritance, Brother Tommy meets a charismatic, smoking-hot cult leader who claims that women are being impregnated by alien beings while they sleep. Tommy’s own sleep is disturbed - by cartel hitmen, Mafia bill collectors, and women intrigued by his vow of chastity.

Jerry has a traumatic past that leaves him subject to psychotic hallucinations and depressive episodes. When he stands accused of stealing a priceless Van Gogh painting, he goes underground, where he develops an unwilling relationship with a woman who believes that the voices she hears are from God.

The Black Mass of Brother Springer tells the story of Sam Springer, a drifter novelist who meets Jack Dover, the retiring Abbot of the Church of God's Flock. Dover's final official act is to ordain Springer and send him off to serve as pastor of an all-Black church in Jacksonville, Florida. Springer soon becomes entangled in the city's growing civil rights movement...and with the church deacon's earthy young wife, Merita.

In the second book in the Dead Jack series, the zombie detective hits rock bottom, bingeing on fairy dust and formaldehyde 24/7. Reluctantly, he sets out with a fellow zombie, the narcissistic Garry, to find his long-lost soul. But a new threat emerges: a neo-Nazi group that hunts down the depressed corpse, believing his sidekick Oswald has the power to capture all the souls in Pandemonium. Again, the wicked world needs saving, but this time can Jack also save himself?

Charlie McGinley writes detective novels. At least he did, until writers block kicked in. He owes his publisher a book, multiple wives alimony and a loan shark is about to break his thumbs. Charlie hightails it out of L.A. two steps ahead of the police and his latest ex. On Route 66, he runs into Ben Fox, a mysterious Native American hitchhiker who just happened to know Ernest Hemingway Charlies favorite writer.

It’s the hottest heat wave of the summer and Gus’s air conditioner has decided to give up the ghost. It’s not the heat keeping Gus awake at night, though, but a nighttime visit from Father Xavier. He couldn’t sleep either due to the heat and decided it would be best that they didn’t sleep together. While the father was bothering Gus by telling him all about his recent visit to Italy, a welcome phone call came. Someone is going to be murdered at Deimos Technology. It doesn’t matter that the someone that is about to die is only an AI computer infected with a fatal computer virus. ...

In the court of the “King”, everyone knows their place. But as the Artist wins hearts and egos with his ballads, uncomfortable truths emerge that shake the Kingdom to its core. Part surreal fable and part narco-lit romance, this prize-winning novel from Yuri Herrera questions the price of keeping your integrity in a world ruled by patronage and power.

Washed up pitching prospect, Rock Cobbler, now a hotshot detective with the Santa Lacrimosa PD likes working alone as much as he likes bourbon. That is to say, a lot.