Thursday Treats: 8/13/2026

Some reading opportunities of interest this week.

 

SMFS list member Scott McKinnon announced that his tale, The Proposition, went up earlier this month at The Yard: Crime Blog. You can read it for free here.

 

The latest issue of Starlight Pulp Review is now out. Starlight Pulp Review #8 features 13 short stories, including one by SMFS list member Mark Coggins (Liverjack). Available at the publisher website as well as at Amazon.

 

Speaking of SMFS, President Joseph S. Walker has compiled the latest publishing news post of the membership. Lots of news regarding short stories, books, and more can be found here on the SMFS blog.

.

Black Cat Weekly #258 is out and includes the cover short story by SMFS list member N.M. Cedeño (The Case of the Cabochon Ring) and more. You can pick up the latest issue here.

 

A reminder that that my short story, A Plan Comes Together, is in issue 254. Folks seem to have really enjoyed it too. If you have not read it yet, go here, and grab a copy.

 

As I said before, I have long been a fan of Larry D. Sweazy. He has announced on Facebook that the Literary Garage is publishing his short story, A Knock at the Door, on August 13^th. So, today! And go get his books. Great reads.

 

I have also long been a fan of the Sheriff Hank Worth Mysteries series by Claire Booth. I knew the new one was coming and have been eagerly awaiting its arrival on NetGalley. That finally happened last week. Hidden Currents: A Sheriff Hank Worth Mystery is now up for preorder at Amazon. It comes out in September 1^st and will also be part of their Kindle Unlimited program. Published by Severn House, it is also available on other platforms.

 

By the way, the Kindle Unlimited program is a great deal. The downside is that one is limited to twenty titles out at a time. When you share the account, as I do with Scott, that is limiting. At the same time, that could be for the best as we both tend to see a book, --oh, shiny--- and add it to the pile. Which is why I have 100 titles here that are checked out from the Dallas Library. He has 90.

 

 

The Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine: September/October 2026 issue is now out and includes short stories by SMFS list members. Nick Guthrie  (The Silent Partner) and Floyd E. Sullivan (The Wedding Photographer) are in the issue as is past SMFS President Robert Lopresti (Was That So Hard?). I have long been a fan of the work of Dallas area author Harry Hunsicker. His short story, The Basement Girl, also appears in the issue. Mr. Hunsicker also has a new book, Mother May I, coming out in October from Oceanview Publishing. The book is up for preorder at Amazon.

 

 

The Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine: September/October 2026 issue is also now out. It includes short stories by SMFS list members Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier (Sabotage Can’t Stop de Shower), Richard Helms  (The Million Dollar Legs Matter),  Anna Scotti (When Bright Angels Beckon) and Dave Zeltserman (Julius Katz’s Ex Returns). Joseph Goodrich, Josh Pachter, and Anna Scotti have essays in the  85^th anniversary issue. Mr. Pachter also has another short story, Farewell to Baytown, in collaboration with the late William Bankier.

 

Last week, after my previous column was set up, I got an email alert from the publisher that Four on the Floor: A Shane Cleary Mystery by Gabriel Valjan was available. Published in late July by Level Best Books, the mystery read is available at Amazon and other vendors.

 

Edited by SMFS list member Michael Bracken, Sleuths Just Wanna Have Fun: Private Eyes in the Material World, is again in print. The new publisher is Crimson Gate Books.  Also in the read are SMFS list members, John M. Floyd (Redwood Creek), Debra H. Goldstein (Who Shot J.R.?), Kathleen Marple Kalb (Diana and the Princess), and SMFS President Joseph S. Walker (The Right Size of Favor). The read is available at Amazon.

 

I find out about stuff on Facebook because friends on there share the news. Such as the news Kevin Burton Smith (The Thrilling Detective) shared about the upcoming new anthology, Capital Crime Writers Presents: A Capital Mystery (Volume 2). Edited by Bernadette Cox and Mike Martin, these short stories take readers back to Ottawa, Canda, and follows the first book, A Capital Mystery. Available at Amazon now for preorder, it will also be on Kindle Unlimited when it releases on August 31^st.

 

Also, later this month, The Tipping Floor, comes out. This is the latest in the 509 Crime Stories series by Colin Conway. Published by High Speed Creative, LLC., the read is available for preorder on Amazon.

 

 

Until next time….

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2026

FFB Review: Charlie-316 by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro

 

From the archive and the first book in a very good series…

 

Officer Tyler Garrett is on routine patrol on a Sunday night in East Central Spokane as Charlie-316 begins. A diverse area with an increasingly significant Russian immigrant presence, it is a quiet, but hot August night. Officer Garrett rolls along with his windows open so that he can hear the neighborhood and is looking forward to an upcoming break. Everything is as it should be until a Chrysler 300 with front end damage shoots out of a street in front of him, whips into a turn cutting off another driver, and takes off. With nearby citizens watching, Officer Tyler Garrett has no choice but to forget about his planned break and begin pursuit.

 

The pursuit is a short one as the driver soon pulls over and then quickly gets out of his car.  He begins to aggressively confront Officer Garrett before seemingly to go for a weapon. At the same time, Officer Garret’s his car window shatters and he realizes he faces a second threat from the nearby vacant house.

 

Officer Garrett has been ambushed and he reacts by firing back at both targets. He takes down the driver and then focuses his attention on the house. Despite his SWAT training and the fact he should wait for the coming backup, he charges the house fully prepared to deal with the second threat.

 

A threat he can’t find. The house is vacant with no sign of any shooter or shooters. Not only can he not find whoever was firing from the house, as backup arrives, he can’t find any sign of a weapon on or near the deceased driver. A driver that it appears was also shot in the back.

 

Any officer would know that such a situation, at best, is a career disaster. As happens in the real world all the time, in the fictional world of Charlie-316 written by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro, such an event is a powder keg for a city and a disaster for the officer involved. In this case, an African American officer shot and killed an apparently unarmed white civilian. A public relations disaster for the police department, the mayor, and numerous others unfolds as an investigation commences into what exactly happened that night.

 

Part police procedural and part thriller, Charlie-316 by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro is an intense read. While it clearly has a “ripped from the headlines” style to it, there are plenty of twists and turns that elevate the book far above the usual such fare. Complex with gritty multi-dimensional characters in a tale where nearly everyone has a secret agenda, Charlie-316 is one heck of a good read. 

 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/41upYAv

 

 

 

Mr. Zafiro provided a digital ARC with no expectation of my reading it or a review.

 

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2019, 2025 

Lesa's Book Critiques: Kevin’s Corner Annex – The Silence of the Dead

 Lesa's Book Critiques: Kevin’s Corner Annex – The Silence of the Dead

Review: The Silence of the Dead: A Charlie-316 Novel by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro

 

The Silence of the Dead: A Charlie-316 Novel by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro is a complicated book that spans a period from 1951 to more recent months. Set in 1951, 1973, 2005 and more recently, it considers the idea of a generational serial killer and the repercussions involved in opening cases long ago declared solved. Set in the Charlie-316 Universe, this sixth book in the series isn’t an easy book to review as revealing details of the situation early in this read would ruin the book.

 

Suffice it to say, and it has to as this reviewer does everything possible to avoid spoilers, the book begins in 2023. Major Crimes Detective Wardell Clint is a good cop, even though he has a large axe to grind with many people inside and outside the Spokane Washington Police Department. One of those people he dislikes, and the feeling is fairly mutual, is former Police Chief Robert Baumgartner. Not only does he think the former chief is a bit racist, he also thinks that the chief did everything from a political perspective first, and as a cop a distant second. So, he does not trust the man at all. But, Detective Clint is on the track of a killer that has been active for decades and the former chief has the knowledge and thereby the answers he needs. So, he heads out to the lakehouse to see the former chief, have a chat, and surreptitiously record what answers he gets.

 

Detective Clint is investigating the 2016 murder of Melaine Paz back when Baumgartner was still chief. Sexually assaulted and left dead behind a dumpster, her case is classified as a cold case and one of several Detective Clint is working. While still in the Major Crimes Unit, he has been put on cold cases only due to recent events. He’s not in the active current rotation and has been professionally sidelined. A man who is known for his conspiracy theories, he believes a conspiracy of some type is at work here with this murder case and others, and intends to expose all to get his status back.

 

If nothing else, Detective Clint is thorough. He has found links to other murder cases going back as far as 1951. All the cases share a common denominator and were classified as solved even though he sees inconsistences and holes in the investigations. Thus, he believes there is a coverup and wants know what really happened and why Baumgartner and others apparently covered it all up

 

Baumgartner eventually agrees to tell all that he knows, unofficially, this one time. As the hours pass, he starts telling it all from the very brutal beginning in 1951.

 

There is a lot to tell. It all is very complicated and shows how some things have changed and others have not.

 

The Silence Of The Dead: A Charlie-316 Novel is an incredibly complicated read. Unlike a lot of police procedurals, this book as well as the series, do not push a pro police agenda. Instead, the read highlights that there are times when no matter what you do, the choices are horrible.

 

While this was not my favorite read in the series to date that began with Charlie-316, it was an interesting and entertaining read. If you like complicated police procedurals steeped in shades of grey and black, this book, is well worth your time.

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/4ivGpUc

 

My ARC reading copy came from author Frank Zafiro back in October 2024 and with no expectation of a review.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2025

SleuthSayers: Inner Spark, Outer Spark

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Colin Conway: WRITERS AND OTHER SCOUNDRELS #2 - GABRIEL VALJAN

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Review: The Ride Along: A Charlie-316 Novel by Frank Zafiro and Colin Conway

The Ride Along: A Charlie-316 Novel picks up two years after the turmoil of the last book, Code Four. For Officer Lee Salter, his graveyard shift of duty is going to be more stressful than normal as he will have a civilian passenger observing his every action. It is not a duty he wants, but Sergeant Jamie Gelabert of the Spokane Police Department needs him to do it.

This person who will ride with him this night is not an ordinary citizen either. She is a member of the Police Reform Initiative. What had started as a small group has blossomed into a real force pushing for massive change in the Spokane Police Department. The group has powerful support. Tonight, board member Melody Weaver is riding with him thanks to ongoing politics involving the mayor, city council, and chief of police. Officer Salter really has no choice. He has to play the hand he has been dealt as best as possible.

It is early October and cold outside. It is also going to get very chilly in the patrol car as officer Lee Salter and Melody Weaver respond to calls and patrol. They each come with the biases and baggage of their jobs and their roles in society. The night is an exercise in trying to find common ground in the vast ocean of quicksand that is policing today.

The Ride Along: A Charlie-316 Novel by Frank Zafiro and Colin Conway is not an easy book to read or review. The authors setup the chapters as alternating points of view of the same situation or scene as the two work the night shift. A night shift where what is going on crime wise takes a far secondary role to discussions regarding policing, civil rights, the BLM movement, and other societal topics. That is until a domestic violence call changes everything for everyone involved forever.

In short, this is a message novel. A book that poses various questions through the dialogue discussions in the read and leaves it to the reader to answer those questions as there are no easy answers. Real life is messy and that is the same situation in the book. As such, there is a bit of a ripped from the headlines feel to it as various real-world events are discussed in this fiction situation.  Many of the same questions raised in the read are part of our daily lives here in the real world, whether we fully realize that or not.

Whether the book succeeds in its goal of raising questions and making the reader think is also on the reader. Some will get it. Some will not. Regardless of that, it should be clear to anyone who reads the book, that this read is in no way, shape, or form, cop propaganda aka copaganda.

 

My read was a digital ARC provided by the author quite some time ago with no expectation of a review.

 

Kevin R. Tipple © 2022

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Bookblog of the Bristol Library: Code Four by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro

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Review: Code Four: A Charlie-316 Novel by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro

Code Four is the final installment of the series that began in Charlie-316 by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro. While much is resolved, one can see how this might not be the end of the story for several of these characters. As this is the fourth and final installment of the story arc that has spanned these books and one wants to avoid spoilers, story details will be limited in this review.

 

This book picks up a few weeks after the end of the last book where the Anti-Crime Team had been dissolved. Yang has quit and left town, Zielinski is on suspension, and Tyler Garett is still active and on duty with the Spokane Police. He works days now which make some of his extracurricular activities a bit riskier. Currently, he is hunting Earl Ellis for reasons that have very little to do with his police work. Ellis is missing and Tyler Garrett has to find him.

 

At the same time, Chief Robert Baumgartner just got news that will ruin his day as well as many days to come. Representatives from the Department of Justice will be in town within minutes to start an investigation into the department. Everyone knows about recent events that have been publicly reported regarding various officers and the command structure. The deaths of officers, officer involved shootings, and various other situations were bad enough. That media storm had pretty much blown itself out except for a city council person who was taking full advantage to raise her visibility.

 

Now with the Feds coming, everything will get stirred up again and the blowback for the chief, a bureaucrat fist and a cop a distant second, could be hard to manage. It is not just his future at stake either. Investigators from DOJ bring trouble on many fronts, especially for Captain Tom Farrell who has been conducting an unauthorized and off the book investigation for many months now. He isn’t the only one doing an off the book investigation into one of their own.

 

The DOJ team also has their own internal issues as well as personal ones. For their supervisor Ĕdelie Durand, having to leave Washington, D.C., right now is personally brutal. But, she is doing her assignment because the job comes first as it always has. Her assistants, Esteban “Steve” Curado and Danielle Watson, may not be as driven as she is, but they are also very good at their jobs despite the fact they both squabble with each other like teens in the backseat on a family road trip.

 

What follows is a politics heavy read that involves the DOJ investigators and the major characters of this four-book story arc as things come to a resolution in many different ways. The dynamics between various characters both personally and professionally are a hallmark of this police procedural series and remain present here. Politics has always been a theme in the series and it is heavier here as many folks try to cover up what they are doing or have done. While some folks were corrupt and did things for money, others took actions with the best of intentions. The arrival of the DOJ makes it impossible to hide what has been going on and brings many matters to a long-anticipated conclusion.

 

What began with Charlie-316 ends here, apparently, in Code Four. A great series by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro that absolutely should be read in order as each book builds on its complicated predecessor. This book, and the series, are highly recommended. 

 

The series: 

Charlie 316 (June 2019) 

Never The Crime: A Charlie 316 Novel (June 2020) 

Badge Heavy: A Charlie 316 Novel (September 2020) 

Code Four: A Charlie 316 Novel (You Are Here) 

  

Code Four: A Charlie 316 Novel

Frank Zafiro

http://www.frankzafiro.com/

Colin Conway

https://colinconway.com/about

Down & Out Books

https://downandoutbooks.com/bookstore/conway-zafiro-code-four/

November 2020

ASIN: B08KGTKBK9

eBook (available in print format)

385 Pages 

 

I received a digital ARC of this read from author Frank Zafiro weeks ago with no expectation of a review. 

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2020

Review: Badge Heavy: A Charlie 316 Novel by Frank Zafiro and Colin Conway

 

Badge Heavy is the third book in the Charlie 316 series and picks up shortly after Never The Crime ended. The Anti-Crime Team is up and running and working the streets of Spokane hard. Officer Gary Stone is on ACT along with Tyler Garrett as well as well with rookie Jun Yang and veteran officer Ray Zielinski. While the four officers are on the team and, in theory, working together, they are fragmented and have settled into a Stone/Garett and Yang/Zielinski pairing. Despite their internal issues, they are generating results in their pursuit of HPOs--High Profile Offenders.

 

It has been nearly two years since Garrett got away with murder and more. Captain Tom Farrell knows Garrett is dirty.  Farrell just can’t prove it. The Anti-Crime Team was supposed to be a trap for Garrett, but it isn’t working out that way at all. If anything, it has allowed Garrett to further entrench himself in the Department and improve his status. Trying to catch Garrett and prove his criminal activities is slowly becoming an insurmountable problem. Farrell does have a couple of ideas though they could just as easily backfire. As readers familiar with the series already know, Farrell is not the only police officer on the hunt sure Garrett is dirty.

 

Badge Heavy by Frank Zafiro and Colin Conway is another rock-solid installment in this highly entertaining police procedural series. Politics and police work are heavily intertwined in real life and they certainly are in the series. The authors have managed to keep ratcheting the tension in each installment and then they rally blow the doors off with the end of Badge Heavy. This is a series that concludes with the November release of Code Four.

 

While it is always important to read any series in order, that absolutely is a must here. Relationships evolve and change over time and there are many changes, personally and professionally, for these characters as time passes. The crime problem and the pollical landscape play major character roles in this series and those issues change as a reaction to events and other factors. That ongoing aspect is a key part of this complicated series.

 

Badge Heavy: A Charlie 316 Novel is highly recommended. 

 

 

 

Badge Heavy: A Charlie 316 Novel

Frank Zafiro

http://www.frankzafiro.com/

Colin Conway

https://colinconway.com/about

Down & Out Books

https://downandoutbooks.com/2020/09/14/new-from-down-out-books-badge-heavy-by-colin-conway-and-frank-zafiro/

September 2020

ASIN: B08CVRYL6G

eBook (available in print format)

385 Pages

 

I received a digital ARC of this read from author Frank Zafiro weeks ago with no expectation of a review.

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2020 

Unlawful Acts for 9/15/2020: Joe Lansdale, Colin Conway, and Frank Zafiro

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Criminal Minds: What You Should Be Reading by Frank Zafiro

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Review: Never The Crime: A Charlie 316 Novel by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro

It has been a little over two years since the events in Charlie-316 happened as Never The Crime: A Charlie-316 Novel begins. Spokane Police Officer Gary Stone works on the seventh floor of city hall in a job that easily could be more dangerous to his long-term survival than being on a high-risk weapons team kicking in doors and chasing bad guys. Designated as a “Special Problems Officer” by the police chief, he serves as a sort of liaison between the mayor and the chief of police. Both are seeking to use him in various ways to gather intel and fulfill their own agendas. Much of that daily business is so routine, he does not think about it all that much.

Much of what Stone does is security and threat assessment. Politicians of all stripes get a lot of threats made against them. Some are meaningless. Others are not. Threats can be as dynamic and fluid as the politics behind every action.

One such situation occurs early in the read when Police Chief Robert Baumgartner gives him the letter he received from a seventeen-year-old girl by the name of Betty Rabe. She writes in her letter that she has been in some sort of intimate relationship with Spokane City Councilman Hahn. Not only is her married with two kids, his daughters are about his age. While legally, she was above the age of consent (16) when they became intimate and therefore, will probably dodge criminal charges on that aspect of things, politically his action will end his career should it become public. If all that was not bad enough, her letter goes on to imply that he, at some point more recently, sexually assaulted her.

The Chief says he got the letter from the Mayor who passed it on which means the Mayor knows as does the personal assistant of the Mayor. The Chief wants Stone to investigate the matter and to be very discreet about doing so. He wants Stone to, while telling no one including his direct superior, determine of an actual crime occurred or this is just a messy pollical problem. Stone is not to enter a report in the system or make any notes into the official records of the department. Instead, he is to handwrite a report and hand it directly to the Chief and only report to the Chief on the matter.

This is one of many political problems in this police procedural. Some problems are internal and not readily apparent. Others, like the case of Tyler Garrett, are out there for all to see even if not everyone really gets what happened then or is happening now.

Ultimately, this latest book in the series is far more about politics that surround police work than actual police work. Actual police work and actual crime take a bit of a backseat in Never The Crime: A Charlie 316 Novel. They are still there in significant ways at different points in the read, but not nearly as much as this reader expected. Repercussions in the short term and long term are a major focus here and can be more deadly than a dark street.

Never The Crime: A Charlie 316 Novel by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro is a solidly good novel. Readers are strongly advised to read Charlie-316, the preceding novel, before this one as many of the same folks are back those events continue to shape people and events here in this read set more than two years later.

I received a digital ARC of this book from Frank Zafiro late last week with no expectation of a review.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2020

Unlawful Acts: Incident Report No. 85

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ColinConway.Com: Why I Wrote... Charlie-316

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One Bite at a Time: Frank Zafiro and Colin Conway, Authors of Charlie-...

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Review: Charlie-316 by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro

Officer Tyler Garrett is on routine patrol on a Sunday night in East Central Spokane as Charlie-316 begins. A diverse area with an increasingly significant Russian immigrant presence, it is a quiet, but hot August night. Officer Garrett rolls along with his windows open so that he can hear the neighborhood and is looking forward to an upcoming break. Everything is as it should be until a Chrysler 300 with front end damage shoots out of a street in front of him, whips into a turn cutting off another driver, and takes off. With nearby citizens watching, Officer Tyler Garrett has no choice but to forget about his planned break and begin pursuit.

The pursuit is a short one as the driver soon pulls over and then quickly gets out of his car.  He begins to aggressively confront Officer Garrett before seemingly to go for a weapon. At the same time, Officer Garret’s his car window shatters and he realizes he faces a second threat from the nearby vacant house.

Officer Garrett has been ambushed and he reacts by firing back at both targets. He takes down the driver and then focuses his attention on the house. Despite his SWAT training and the fact he should wait for the coming backup, he charges the house fully prepared to deal with the second threat.

A threat he can’t find. The house is vacant with no sign of any shooter or shooters. Not only can he not find whoever was firing from the house, as backup arrives, he can’t find any sign of a weapon on or near the deceased driver. A driver that it appears was also shot in the back.

Any officer would know that such a situation, at best, is a career disaster. As happens in the real world all the time, in the fictional world of Charlie-316 written by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro, such an event is a powder keg for a city and a disaster for the officer involved. In this case, an African American officer shot and killed an apparently unarmed white civilian. A public relations disaster for the police department, the mayor, and numerous others unfolds as an investigation commences into what exactly happened that night.

Part police procedural and part thriller, Charlie-316 by Colin Conway and Frank Zafiro is an intense read. While it clearly has a “ripped from the headlines” style to it, there are plenty of twists and turns that elevate the book far above the usual such fare. Complex with gritty multi-dimensional characters in a tale where nearly everyone has a secret agenda, Charlie-316 is one heck of a good read. 

Amazon Associate Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/41upYAv

Mr. Zafiro provided a digital ARC with no expectation of my reading it or a review.

Kevin R. Tipple ©2019