Short Story Wednesday Review: The C Word: For Some Lockdown Has Been Murder --- Reviewed by Aubrey

I have not gotten an anthology finished and reviewed for today. Been too sick as the heat makes my various issues way worse. That meant that a repeat review had to run for this first Wednesday in July. A recent grocery story run where there were zero products for cold and flu, as well as the knowledge that several local folks I know now have Covid, again, it seemed like a good time to pull this one from the archives and run it again today. Thanks again to Aubrey Nye Hamilton who supplied it and continues to make our Mondays way better.

 

 

Up for discussion this week is a recently released charity anthology collected and published by Spellbound Books, the brainchild of Nikki East and Sumaira Wilson. All royalties will be donated to NHS Charities Together, a coalition of 240 NHS charities who support a wide range of health care institutions in the United Kingdom. See more here: https://www.nhscharitiestogether.co.uk/.

 

The C Word: For Some Lockdown Has Been Murder, released 7 January 2021 on Kindle, is an assortment of 26 short stories that appear to be limited only by the imaginations of the wide range of authors who wrote them. There are disappearances, there are zombies, there are stalkers, there are gang enforcers, there are book groups. There are a depressing number of stories about women with abusive husbands; Andy Hill’s story along those lines called Strength has a nice surprise at the end. There are families who have been driven to the breaking point by lockdown.

 

Supermarkets play a role in some; one of my favorites is by Nick Jackson called The Haunted Trolley. David Field’s offering, titled Out of Lockdown, is a positively brilliant tale of a creative way to enter witness protection. Derek Thompson’s The Understudy is about a young criminal who learns the ropes faster than his mentor realizes. Men who tell women they don’t know to smile will perhaps think twice if they read Trevor Wood’s entry called Smile Please.

 

I believe the names of contributors are largely unfamiliar to U.S. crime fiction readers, although a few are well-known.

·         Yvonne Bastian	·         Nick Jackson
·         Jane Carrick	·         Simon Maltan
·         Karen Clarke	·         Tracy Mearns
·         David Field	·         Vanessa Morgan
·         Paul Finch	·         Steve Mosby
·         Chloe Greene	·         Janine Pipe
·         Elly Griffiths	·         Nick Quantrill
·         Sophie Hannah	·         Rob Scragg
·         Matt Hickman	·         Derek Thompson
·         Sarah Hilary	·         Nick Triplow
·         Andy Hill	·         Mark Wilson
·         Laura Huntley	·         Claire Woolins
·         Linda Innes	·         Nick Jackson

 

This modestly priced compilation is a pleasant way to pass a few hours and to meet some new authors while lending support to a group whose resources have been severely taxed in the past year. Recommended!

 

 

·         ASIN: B08RRW8K6P

·         Publisher: SpellBound Books (January 7, 2021)

·         Publication date: January 7, 2021

·         Language: English

·         File size: 758 KB 

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

 

Aubrey Hamilton ©2021, 2022, 2025

Aubrey Hamilton is a former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at night.

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Guest Post: Writer’s Haven or Hell? by Kris Lackey

Please welcome author Kris Lackey to the blog today. Coming this summer is Ten-Acre Rock. This is the fourth book in the Bill Maytubby and Hannah Bond Mystery series.

 

 

 

Writer’s Haven or Hell? by Kris Lackey

 

 

     Promotions come to me from writers’ retreats.  You’ve seen the places—rustic cabins on coastal islands in Maine, rustic cabins in the Georgia pines, rustic cabins perched on Montana scree. Many of them have no electricity.  They all promise the same things—isolation and silence.  For a week, a month, or—horrors!—months.  They all send a bolt of terror down my spine. 

     Some of my writer friends seek out these hermit cells and thrive there, writing like a house (sorry, cabin) afire.  I am happy for them.  But how anyone can write in silence and isolation is beyond the powers of my imagination.  It’s lonely.  It’s boring.  I swear, I would bust out of that cabin before lunch the first day, walk to the nearest road, and hitchhike to a café or diner so I could get some work done. 

     Give me the coffee shop’s hushed convos, the old C&W ballads on speakers turned low, the hiss of the steam wand. And throw in a half dozen college-town baristas—Russian language students, math theory majors, painters, gym rats. They can answer more questions than Google.  “What is this called?” I ask the painter as I point to the edge of my palm.  “That’s the blade of your hand.  I learned that in figure drawing.”  I knew that once but could never have recalled it in a million years. 

     Also, because I am old and often write about younger characters, I have to ask how they describe lowering a car window nowadays (they “put it down”) and what to call the meat you put in a hot dog (“hot dog”—never the “weiner” or “weenie” of my youth, for obvious reasons).  They still know the Three Stooges!

     Before COVID I wrote three of my four Maytubby-Bond crime novels, published by Blackstone, in two Norman, Oklahoma, coffee shops, mostly the Gray Owl.  Working in two daily shifts of seventy-five minutes, awash in human white-noise, I finished each in two years.

     Good to know I’m not alone.  Richard Russo, whose novels I love, writes in New England diners.  My friend and fellow Oklahoma City novelist, the Edgar-winner Lou Berney, writes in coffee shops.   

     Then COVID shut down the coffee shops. 

     I took to walking long distances every day, coming home to a silent study—the dread retreat cabin--to work on the fourth novel.  YouTube offered a trove of ambient coffee house sounds, which I launched each afternoon at five.  My favorites were from Japan and Holland:  I could not understand what people were saying.  All the better.  The clinking of spoons and clattering of saucers still cast their calming spell.  (There is one startling moment in the Dutch shop when someone—a barista I guess—says, “Roger, you have a cappuccino.”)

     And for the first time I drank some alcohol—vodka and tonic—as I wrote during my ante-pandemic happy hour. My editor and early readers of the fourth novel, Ten-Acre Rock, have not found anything awry. Nevertheless, I’m back to writing on caffeine solamente.  

    So, from my perch at the Gray Owl, here’s to my friends who write to the sounds of bustle and gab, steam-wands and Hank Williams!   

 

Kris Lackey ©2023

Kris Lackey is the author of the Chickasaw Nation Mysteries, featuring tribal policeman Bill Maytubby and deputy sheriff Hannah Bond.  The fourth in the series, Ten-Acre Rock, appears July 7, 2023.  Kris lives in Norman, Oklahoma.

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Review: Dogtown: A Willie Black Mystery by Howard Owen

It is early January 2021 as the latest in the Willie Black Series, Dogtown, begins. Covid is raging in Richmond, Virginia, and the newspaper industry continues its slow slide to oblivion. For now, Willie Black still has a job to do. He covers the crime beat, day or night, for the local paper. That means that the discovery of the body on a hill that gives a nice view of Richmond’s skyline is on his beat.

 

The dead white guy isn’t the first person to die in the new year. He just might be the first to die by savage slash to the throat. A cut so vicious it almost took his head off. He is also probably the first to lose a finger after death.

 

He won’t be the last.

 

The murder of a 58-year-old plumber will the first of several linked killings over the next days and weeks. Reporter Willie Black chases the story and its ramifications because once again the police have the wrong suspect in custody thanks to heavy pollical pressure. As the murders continue, he chases the story against the backdrop of Covid and its effect along with ongoing societal issues in Richmond.

 

This is the latest solidly good installment of a series that does not get near enough attention. Societal issues of various types along with the slow ongoing demise of the newspaper industry servs as the background to numerous instances of murder in this series. More than once, those factors lead to the arrest and incarceration of the innocent and poor.

 

Such is true here in Dogtown: A Willie Black Mystery.

 

While it is always recommended by this reviewer to read in order, the allusions to previous events and stories in this book are minimal. That means that with the majority of the read referencing current events in January 2022 with a minimum of backstory, one could safely read this one first if so desired.

 

Either way, Dogtown: A Willie Black Mystery by Howard Owen is a solidly good read.

 

My reading copy was an ARC sent to me by ‎ The Permanent Press last Fall with no expectation of my review. 

 

Kevin R. Tipple ©2023

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