Face value, p.8
Face Value, page 8
By Richard Barre
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Christmas Stories
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Burning Moon
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Lost
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Corrosion
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The Devil Doesn’t Want Me
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Unloaded
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Falling
Falling Too
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Shakedown
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Stinking Rich
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Texas Noir
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Murder at the Beach: Bouchercon Anthology 2014
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Down, Out and Dead
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Eddie & Sunny (TP only)
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No Hard Feelings
By Angel Luis Colón
No Happy Endings
Meat City on Fire (and Other Assorted Debacles)
By Jen Conley
Cannibals and Other Stories
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Gitmo
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LAst Resort
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Viper’s Tail
Murder in the Slaughterhouse
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Pine Box for a Pin-Up
Busted Valentines and Other Dark Delights
A Cougar’s Kiss
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The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping
Lagniappe
Just Like That
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Carolina Crimes: 21 Tales of Need, Greed and Dirty Deeds
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Tranquility Denied
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Bad Habits
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Wrong Crowd
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Crystal on Electric Acetate
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Stray Dogs: Writing from the Other America
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Blood on the Bayou: Bouchercon Anthology 2016
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Bolt Action Remedy
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Beachhead
Cold War Canoe Club
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No Going Back
Rules of Honor
The Lawless Kind
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No Safe Place
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LAdies’ Night
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An Ice Cold Paradise
Chicago Shiver
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Last Exit to Murder
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The Devil and the Diva
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Finders Keepers
Full House
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A Better Kind of Hate
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Interrogations
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Murder and Mayhem in Muskego
Cooking with Crimespree
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Back to Brooklyn
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Screen Test
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Nothing You Can Do
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Triple Shot
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Over Their Heads
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Crosswise
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Killing Malmon
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Coast to Coast
Coast to Coast 2
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The Devil Dogs of Belleau Wood
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Passport to Murder: Bouchercon Anthology 2017
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Stray Dogs: Interviews with Working-Class Writers
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May
By Bill Moody
Czechmate: The Spy Who Played Jazz
The Man in Red Square
Solo Hand
The Death of a Tenor Man
The Sound of the Trumpet
Bird Lives!
Mood Swings (TP only)
By Warren Moore
Broken Glass Waltzes
By Andrew Nette
Gunshine State (*)
By Gerald M. O’Connor
The Origins of Benjamin Hackett
By Marcus Pelegrimas
Blind Eye (*)
By Gary Phillips
The Perpetrators
Scoundrels: Tales of Greed, Murder and Financial Crimes (editor)
Treacherous: Grifters, Ruffians and Killers
3 the Hard Way
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Beat L.A. (Graphic Novel)
By Tom Pitts
Hustle
American Static
By Thomas Pluck
Bad Boy Boogie
Life During Wartime
By Robert J. Randisi
Upon My Soul
Souls of the Dead
Envy the Dead
By Rob Riley
Thin Blue Line
By Charles Salzberg
Devil in the Hole
Swann’s Last Song
Swann Dives In
Swann’s Lake of Despair
Swann’s Way Out
By Scott Loring Sanders
Shooting Creek and Other Stories
By Linda Sands
3 Women Walk Into a Bar (TP only)
Grand Theft Cargo
By Ryan Sayles
The Subtle Art of Brutality
Warpath
Let Me Put My Stories In You
By John Shepphird
The Shill
Kill the Shill
Beware the Shill
By Nathan Singer
Blackchurch Furnace
By Anthony Neil Smith
Yellow Medicine
Hogdoggin’
The Baddest Ass
Holy Death
All the Young Warriors
Once a Warrior
Worm
Psychosomatic
The Drummer
Choke on Your Lies
XXX Shamus
By Liam Sweeny
Welcome Back, Jack
By Art Taylor, editor
Murder Under the Oaks: Bouchercon Anthology 2015
By Ian Truman
Grand Trunk and Shearer
By James Ray Tuck, editor
Mama Tried 1
Mama Tried 2 (*)
By Nathan Walpow
The Logan Triad
One Last Hit
By Lono Waiwaiole
Wiley’s Lament
Wiley’s Shuffle
Wiley’s Refrain
Dark Paradise
Leon’s Legacy
By George Williams
Inferno and Other Stories
Zoë
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Exacting Justice
By Frank Zafiro and Eric Beetner
The Backlist
The Short List
Down & Out: The Magazine
Volume 1 Issue 1: Reed Farrel Coleman (featured author)
Published by ABC Group Documentation, an imprint of Down & Out Books
By Alec Cizak
Down on the Street
By Grant Jerkins
Abnormal Man
A Scholar of Pain (*)
By Robert Leland Taylor
Through the Ant Farm
Published by All Due Respect, an imprint of Down & Out Books
By Greg Barth
Selena: Book One
Diesel Therapy: Selena Book Two
Suicide Lounge: Selena Book Three
Road Carnage: Selena Book Four
Everglade: Selena Book Five
Selena: The Complete Series
By Eric Beetner
Nine Toes in the Grave
By Phil Beloin Jr.
Revenge is a Redhead
By Math Bird
Histories of the Dead and Other Stories
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The Last Laugh: Crime Stories
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Cleaning Up Finn
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Crooked Roads: Crime Stories
Manifesto Destination
By Pablo D’Stair and Chris Rhatigan
You Don’t Exist
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Kill ’Em with Kindness
Love You to a Pulp
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FatBoy
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The Deepening Shade
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The Sin Tax
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Route 12
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Prodigal Sons
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A Killer’s Love
Criminal Love and Other Stories
Tussinland
What Happens in Reno
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Three Kinds of Fool
Accidental Outlaws
By Rob Pierce
The Things I Love Will Kill Me Yet: Stories
Uncle Dust
Vern in the Heat
With the Right Enemies
By Michael Pool
Debt Crusher
By Chris Rhatigan
Race to the Bottom
Squeeze
The Kind of Friends Who Murder Each Other
By Ryan Sayles
I’m Not Happy ’til You’re Not Happy: Crime Stories
By Ryan Sayles and Chris Rhatigan
Two Bullets Solve Everything
By Daniel Vlasaty
A New and Different Kind of Pain
Only Bones
By William E. Wallace
Dead Heat with the Reaper
Hangman’s Dozen
Published by Shotgun Honey, an imprint of Down & Out Books
By Hector Acosta
Hardway
By Rusty Barnes
Knuckledragger
Ridgerunner
By Angel Luis Colón
The Fury of Blacky Jaguar
Blacky Jaguar Against the Cool Clux Cult
By Marie S. Crosswell
Texas, Hold Your Queens
By DeLeon DeMicoli
Les Cannibales
By Christopher Irvin
Federales
By Nick Kolakowski
A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps
Slaughterhouse Blues
By R. Daniel Lester
Dead Clown Blues
By Mike Miner
Hurt Hawks
By Tom Pitts
Knuckleball
By Ryan Sayles
Goldfinches
By Max Sheridan
Dillo
By Albert Tucher
The Place of Refuge
(*) Coming soon
Back to TOC
Here is a preview of Dead Clown Blues, a Carnegie Fitch Mystery Fiasco by R. Daniel Lester , published by Shotgun Honey, an imprint of Down & Out Books…
1
The diner was Deadsville with a capital “D.” I ordered breakfast for lunch and headed for my usual back booth. The only other customer in the joint was propped up on his elbow at the counter, snoring Zs over a bowl of Boston clam chowder. Harry drove a bus and had one ex-wife, two mortgages, three kids and rumour had it, personally slit the throats of four enemy soldiers at Incheon. Whatever the case, now he just looked on the other side of the knife.
As for staff, Greek Benny, the diner’s owner and main grill man, was in the kitchen busting a gut over the funnies and Glenda, the knockout waitress, was putting on lipstick and making little kissy faces into a hand mirror. She gave one last smooch, placed the mirror back under the counter and then came over with the coffee pot.
“Cup of joe, Fitch?” she asked, already pouring.
I was on my third cup when Taffy Pook entered the diner and made a beeline for my booth. We weren’t best friends, to say the least, but each of us played nice because we could get something out of it. It was a good system. Scratching backs meant less time for holding knives.
Taffy squeezed himself in, sucking in his breath to make the fit. He had the wide waist and protruding stomach of the gainfully employed glutton. As an in-house investigator working fraud cases for Best Life Insurance Corp. he had all the perks, like respect, an expense account and a big fancy desk in a big fancy downtown high-rise. In contrast to an entrepreneur like myself, with what I had: second hand suits, a rooming house eviction notice on two-month rotation and an office on the corner of Skid and Row.
“Want that?” he asked.
“All yours,” I said.
Taffy snatched the last strip of bacon off my plate with one hand and pushed a manila envelope at me with the other. I opened the envelope. Inside was half payment for a new hide-and-click surveillance job, along with a thick file for one Bartell Rightly. Now, in matters of Big Insurance versus Regular Joe, I always tended to root for David not Goliath. However, a job was a job, and a soft spot for sad sack scammers who didn’t have the plain sense to stop doing things they claimed they couldn’t was never going to get the landlady off my back or keep Glenda pouring the good stuff. Besides, when Best Life was happy, Taffy Pook was happy. And when Taffy Pook was happy, so was my wallet. And that was fat city, the place to be. I inhaled. The money smelled good.
“You want I should leave you two alone?” Taffy asked.
“Maybe,” I said, “but that’d mean getting paper cuts in a bad place.”
Taffy grunted a laugh and licked the bacon grease off his lips.
“Why the above-market rates?” I asked.
“Let’s say your sense of timing is excellent.”
“First time for everything.”
“See, my other guy, Nelson, he fell out of a tree yesterday and busted up his back pretty good tryin’ to get a pin-up shot of this redhead babe layin’ poolside.”
“Fraud case?”
“Nah. Hobby.”
“Ah. What’s the picture?”
“He said she was tall with a body like—”
“I meant the prognosis on Nelson. He out of action for a while or…?”
“Yeah, a while.”
“Too bad.”
Taffy grinned. “You asking ’cause of the work?” My silence was answer enough, so he put on a fake serious face and fake cleared his throat. “I’m drowning in flim-flam right now and you, Carnegie Fitch, are my life raft.”
“Wow, didn’t know you were so poetical, Pook.”
“Why, Fitch ol’ buddy, I’m full of surprises.” He was right about that. Full of gas and halitosis. Taffy scooted out of the booth. His stomach got wedged in there for a second, but he got it sorted. “And speaking of surprises, none of that artsy crap, okay? Last time, half the roll was useless.”
“I know, you gave ’em back to me, remember?”
“Yeah, yeah, like always. Just listen to what I’m sayin’.”
“I’m listening. Don’t pop an artery.”
Taffy felt his forehead, feeling for the vein that always bulged out when he got upset. It wasn’t, but I liked to kid him about it. Sometimes that got him riled up enough to actually get the artery going. It was a chicken and egg thing.
“Asshole,” he said.
2
The rooming house where I hung my hat was an okay place if you were half blind and your nose didn’t work so good. For the rest of us, it took guts. Dingy hallways led to dingier rooms and there was one bathroom for each floor, which were clean if you considered zoo cages clean. Once a week, the landlady threw a bucket of sudsy water in there and left it up to gravity to do the rest.
When I reached my floor, I nodded at Mrs. Henry, who was sitting in a chair at the payphone in the hallway. I had to hand it to her, stellar work ethic. She put in a solid eight hours on that phone every day, week in, week out, rain or shine. As I walked by, I overheard her saying something about someone’s pound cake, how it was too dry, too flaky, not at all like her pound cake, the one that was so moist and succulent. Breaking news no doubt.
