Chapter 1 “Rita Mars, this is a voice from your past.” “Who the hell is this?” Rita demanded. It was eleven o’clock, and the dreary end of a long day. A miserable October rain tapped on the office windows. Through the water washed glass, Baltimore’s Mitchell Court House next door was a smear of grey […]

Chapter 1 Brock hurried down the dusty tunnels of Leicester Square, stepping onto the Tube’s busy concrete platform. People were spilling out everywhere, and agonising pains thumped through his head like a revolver firing continuously at point-blank range. An announcement blasted through the Tube’s crackling intercom as a train rushed through the tunnel. Turbulence forced […]

A STRANGE CASE “Another buzz,” groaned Ria. “Who can be so desperate?” She stopped trimming hedges and walked across the lawn of her house. As she neared the front door, she heard the telephone still ringing. By the time she had flung the door open, the ringing had stopped. She dropped her gardening apron on […]

7:20 p.m. “Hello, sleepy head.” The voice broke through into her fog-filled mind and Brooke struggled to open her eyes completely; and keep them opened. She shook her head to clear the cobwebs that had developed, but that did no more than create a vertigo sensation, so she lie her head still and waited. It […]

ARTICLE Edward Lindstrom was comfortably seated at the desk in the corner of his room, laptop in front of him. He had been trying for several years now – unsuccessfully – to begin work on his first novel. If he was honest he had spent more time daydreaming about the bestseller he was convinced that […]

Few tourists come to San Francisco in mid-April, at least, not ones familiar with San Francisco weather. The Bay Area is only comfortably warm from about late June to mid-November. The rest of the time, it’s rainy, foggy, cool, and windy. Very nice if you’re half Eskimo. Of course, it does have its sporadic days […]

Death smells of macaroons. Amelie was slumped over the kitchen table, face in a plate of meringues. Spearmint-green flakes stuck to her left cheek. Her glazed irises remained fixed upon a vase of spiky dahlias, cut and arranged by Grace that very morning. Every tangerine petal was bug and blemish free; my sister was well […]

Chapter 1: The Wreckage A closed, clenched fist drove hard and fast into the steel of his van door.  He did not feel it.  There was no pain, no agony involved, as the transmitters of all such feeling had long stopped functioning.  Only the popping sound of sheet metal denting and flexing could be heard, […]