BR Stateham’s New Hahn And Morales Caper

Here’s The Publisher’s Notes On BR Stateham/s New Novel.
Turner Hahn and Frank Morales Are Back

Homicide detectives Turner Hahn and Frank Morales are back on duty in their new novel, Guilt of Innocence.

The two are investigating a couple of murders which pushes them to the limits of their wits. One case involves the death of a very successful corporate lawyer. A high priced corporate lawyer who happens to be married to a woman who heads the largest cosmetics firm in the country. How the murder took place is perplexing enough. But as more bodies begin to drop Turner and Frank soon realize they are facing a maniacal mastermind who may very well be smarter than both of them combined.

Twists and turns, dead ends and red herrings . . . with an ending that will truly be surprising. This case has it all. And this is only case number one!

Case number two involves the disappearance of a young girl fifteen years earlier. A Cold Case File. Except it is not a cold case any longer. The girl has returned. And now lies on a cold metal table in the morgue. Someone has gone out of their way to make the homicide look like a suicide. Apparently a crime syndicate is frantic to make sure neither Turner nor Frank find out the facts surrounding the girl’s disappearance fifteen years earlier. A hit man is in town grimly eliminating everyone who may have known the girl. A hit man with orders to possibly rub out Turner and Frank as well.

And again the real killer is someone whom no one would have ever suspected.

Turner and Frank are at their best. Dry wit, interesting characters, lots of action, vivid imagery, and two genuine classic mysteries. All of it can be found in Guilt of Innocence. Find it anywhere ebooks or sold.

BR Stateham’s guys are at it again. Sounds like aother detroit iron muscle opera with lotsa guns. Good stuff!

Turner Hahn and Frank Morales Are Back

Wendig Flash Challenge Generated Titles

Operation Nervous God

“OH MY ME! ” The Almighty bellowed and fled the throne room in a cloud of holy dust.
The Arch Angel Michael, who had been quietly dozing in the heavenly afternoon, leapt to his feet wildly swinging his mighty sword in all directions and spinning in place to face the threat head on. He saw no enemy before him but had a clear view of the Host Of Host’s celestial backside disappearing around the corner of the palace wall. Fast.

“Good grief” he muttered and took up the chase.

Two blocks later he was joined by The Keeper Of The Pearly Gates who raced along beside him.

“Hi, Mike,” Saint Peter said. “What’s up?”

The warrior angel glanced at his companion as they thundered down the golden cobblestones.

“Hi Pete,” he said, pointing. “I’m trying to catch up to His nibs there before He falls and hurts Himself.”

Just then the Fleeing Deity glanced over his shoulder, put on a burst of impossible speed and disappeared over the Eternal Horizon. The pair came to a halt and stood, bent over with their hands on their immortal knees, puffing and huffing.

“No point in chasing Him if He doesn’t want to be caught,” Peter said.
“Yeah,” his companion panted. “For a guy as old as Him, He’s got a lot of quick going on.”

The Gate Keeper nodded, groaning as he straightened up. “Well,” he said. “What brought it on this time? Lucifer acting out again? Loki, maybe?’

Michel peered at the distant dust cloud.

“No. He was reading His printed out e-mails and suddenly leaped into the air yelling like the Minotaur with his, uh, horn, in a crack and scrammed.”

“What did the e-mail say?”

“Beats me.” Michael rummaged in his robe for a moment, pulled out a sheet of copier paper and handed it over. “Here.”

Peter scanned rapidly down the page. “Just another arrival and departure list,” he said. “Wait a minute.”
He re-read a single line, half way down the page and with wide eyes, handed the paper over to his friend. “Look,” he said.

The Protecting Angel read the name — and blanched.

“Her!” He said. “Arriving today. In fifteen minutes.”

The Gate Keeper nodded, shuddering all over.

“Arriving from Earth. Celestial flight number 13. The Holy Mother Mary’s sister.”

“No wonder He ran,” said Michael. You remember what SHE called Him last time?”

Peter nodded again. In fact his head had been nodding — wobbling rather — since he’d read the name on the manifest.

“Yeah,” he said. And I remember what she called YOU too.” His wings drooped and a feather fell loose to the ground. “And I most especially recall what she called ME.”

The angels said not a word more, but turned and raced after their boss.

The manifest drifted slowly to the golden sands of Main Street.

After all, as is known to the whole of creation, when the Auntie Christ comes to town, the angels flee.

Wendig Challenge: Journey

Killing Field

It had been a long trip from the big city to the quiet of forest and farmland.
He was a little man and they had no trouble lifting him from the trunk.
A pistol prodded his back.
“Walk,” a flat voice said.
“You got it wrong,” he said.
The gun prodded again. He walked.
“Please,” he said to no one — maybe God.
“Stop.”
A voice dark as bottomland gumbo. Time froze.
The little man looked for escape. He was frozen too.
“You have planted too much in my field,” the voice said.
Around him . . . things . . . rose dripping from the muck.
There were screams. Then silence.
“Thank God,” he said.
“I am not He,” the voice answered.
And pulled him down.

Exit Interview

CHUCH WENDIG’S DEATH CHALLENGE ENTRY:

Exit Interview
If you know the desert, you know most of its beauty is hidden; visible only in sudden, unexpected flashes that take your breath away.
Like when you’ve crossed the final line and your partners stake you out on the sand and leave you alone in the silence.
Unable to turn your head, you watch the crows come down to peck out your eyes.
They swoop gracefully, the sun behind them, and the last thing you see is that their wings are not all black, that the trailing edges of those wings are the same beautiful, opalescent gray as a mobster’s wide-brimmed hat.

Review Of Richard Godwin’s Mr. Glamour

If I had to use a single word description (which is impossible) of Mr. Glamour it would be, “unflinching.” Richard refuses to defuse the absolute reality of a psychotic killer’s trail and the horrible scenes from the nightmares such killers leave in their wake. Every cop (and combat soldier) I know will tell you that you are a very fortunate person if you have never witnessed the things they see almost every day. They say it’s impossible to soften such scenes, to forget them, that they leave a mark upon your soul that can never be erased. They also say that the only thing standing between them and putting their own gun in their mouths is the absolute need to catch the one who is responsible for those devastating acts and bring them to the light. Mr. Glamour is the closest I’ve read to the stories my friends have told me. That’s some powerful stuff, indeed.

More powerful still is the intent examination of extreme psychotic behavior present in the book. Beyond that, once you’re into it a bit, you realize that the work is also a savage, biting satire of those people who separate themselves from us — the ordinary, quotidian herd. Another of its themes is a Swiftian view of the class system present in even the most “modern’ of countries. Those are just a few of the purposes of this book.

But, finally, it’s a terrific, scary ride. The Glitterati are being murdered most gruesomely by an uncatchable maniac. The Armani crowd are dropping like flies. The police are running around in every direction. Amid a cast of seemingly dozens of characters there are: An ex-con fresh out of the slam, on the street, with a Luger in his pocket, looking for somebody. A obsessionally clean housewife sees faces in the fog and packs a box of knives in her car trunk. A male cop with a horrid scar disfiguring his face. A female cop with her own, internal, scars, acting out sexually driven solutions to her own bad dreams. A gigolo easy riding on the sly off the wives of wealthy men. Maseratis, Bow Wow bras, thousand dollar a pair crotchless panties dropping down the gilded rear ends of trophy wives everywhere you look. And, did I mention, murders most foul?

One hell of roller coaster. One of the few novels I’ve read that is very worthy of favorable comparison to James Ellroy’s L.A. Quartet.

REVIEW OF DARREN SANT’S: A GOOD DAY.

Years ago I was diving at Martinique in the French Carribean. At a place called Diamond Rock. I was at about 130 feet, just loafing along looking at the broken coral, sand and sea grass bottom when something caught my eye. At that depth, all color has for the most part vanished to be replaced with the ocean’s endless monochrome blues, grays and blacks.

But suddenly in the midst of all the subdued pallet, I was hit square in the eyes by a spot of indescribably brilliant, neon yellow. Turned out it was a small sponge that somehow retained the ability to show its incandescent natural yellow in the colorless depths of the sea. It shocked me, that sponge, snapped me out of my undersea revery like a cattle prod to my, um, nether regions. I wondered how and why the small entity had gained the ability to stay so vivid. I still don’t know.

A Good Day by Darren Sant has that characteristic . It’s set in a colorless, hopeless world at the bottom of the heap. In a place as dark as the abyss. So dark that the abyss has a clearer view of things than the people existing there.

There’s a seagull. Not a pretty one. A sort of last chance, dingy winged seagull making its precarious living off of alley scraps. And this guy. This broke down, sneak thief, heroin riddled guy on the far end of survival. Plus there’s this kid. In trouble and scared and silent and hopeless and nobody cares. Except maybe this guy we talked about already. He does something this guy. He does something that startles me as much as the sponge did shining out in the depths. And for a moment I think: Maybe. But then . . . well . . . remember where you are, boyo.

But you know, I remember that yellow sponge. How it made me feel.

I’ll remember A Good Day too. How it made me feel

I think you will too.

VIRTUE

In the day I bend to my work. Sometimes raking the fallen leaves that scatter across the gold-green meadows that border the forest. Sometimes painting the white washed, wooden fences of the great estate. There are many chores to do in such a fine place as this. I work and watch every day as the maidens come forth, in their exquisite gowns with their tiaras of platinum and gold sitting atop their carefully coiffured tresses, to play with the Unicorns.

The great, rainbow-colored beasts kneel and touch their chalk-white horns to the green grass in tribute to the roses of virtue and virginity that are the maidens. The maids shyly, slyly, glance at each other from beneath lowered lashes and pet the shining horns knowing that only the purest of the pure may touch a Unicorn’s horn. Then, in the long, late afternoon shadows, they troop back into the castle.

They never look at me, of course. I am merely the hired girl of the estate. Plain and possessed of only the simplest garments of homespun wool and cheapest cotton. With rough hands and smelling of sweat, I am less than nothing in their eyes.

But, when the dark comes and the moon rises to sail the depths of the sky, the forests rustle softly and the great beasts come to me. Their quiet nickering and the scent of their lust surrounds me as I lie down and open to them and am transported to the place where only they can take me.

Sometimes, not often, I look at the sleeping castle, think of the maids within and laugh.

READING ALLAN GUTHRIE: TWO WAY SPLIT

There’s a place on Highway 1 in California where you can look straight down a hundred feet on a small cove surrounded by jagged black lava rock walls and held fast at its mouth by submerged reefs. As you look down on the sea you can actually see the roiling evidence of the five or six currents that meet there. They look like several separate snakes weaving their way around, past and through each other. They come together and draw apart and sometimes weave their own way for a bit. You can track their individual trails by bits of seaweed caught in their grip or bottom sand that makes coppery gold patterns as it swirls in the passage of the water. Whatever their paths and crossings and seeming confusions of purpose, at last they join and crash on the small sandy beach and wipe it white and pristine.

Two Way Split is like that place. Its multiple, diverse characters circle and swirl over, under, around, and through each other; seeming to go in all different directions at once. In the end though, they come together and crash onto the sandy beach and wipe it clean and pure and just the way it ought to be.

All that arty bleep aside, In Two Way Split, Mr. Allan Guthrie with a maniacal laugh, knocks your derby clear off your head, sends it flying with the wind and announces that people, events and even life itself always come down to the jagged edge of a two way split. Buckle your chin strap and hang on, troops. You’re in for a RIDE!