"He said he'd call the RCMP immediately, and that I did some good work. He also told me to get the hell away from there. I was inclined to do what he said, for once. I was standing in the middle of a downtown parking lot in someone else's bathing suit and flip-flops. And my hair was wet."
Meet Zack Virtue. He makes a lot of bad decisions. The first was to become a full-time artist. The second was to moonlight as a private investigator.
Whether it's foiling nuclear terrorists and bank robbers, or finding missing persons and beating the crap out of Russian mobsters, Virtue is on the case. As a private investigator, he's a great painter. As an artist, he's a great magnet for bullets.
Supporting him is Vijay Dhaliwal, a computer genius who throws the occasional security agency job his way. He tries to lure Virtue into the business, but our artist-turned-vet-turned-janitor-turned-artist wants nothing to do with Vijay's shenanigans. Until, of course, the money runs out.
Then there's William Lacroix, the dude-bro cop who never grew up. Kind of like Peter Pan meets Joe Friday. Virtue puts up with his attitude in exchange for access to the police.
In this collection of stories, Zack Virtue tries to navigate the seedy world of private investigation, while half-assing his way through the seedy world of professional artists.
"Blog Me Deadly" is the title story, where Virtue tries to blog his psychological issues away. He finds out quickly that even a baggage-laden artist with a highly varied skill set can become a force to be reckoned with-whether he's wielding a paintbrush or a gun.
Reminiscent of Alice Munro-these stories are heart wrenching, authentic, and luminous.
~ Ginger Bolton
9 tantalizing tales that are the embodiment of the cozy mystery genre. Plenty of warmth, humour and unusual settings.
Mysteries, prize-winners, and a hero who spare-changes John Lennon at the premiere of A Hard Day's Night in 1964.
From estate agents to house cleaners, a delicious array of
women, some with outrage in their hearts—and some with revenge—deal with crime
in new, imaginative ways.
The sixteen short stories in Crime Wave 2: Women of a Certain Age range from light-hearted to heart-breaking, and from romantic to treacherous.
In Crime Wave 2, "The Air Affair," a short story of sleuths of a certain age, set in the Mysterious Devices steampunk world.
Malice most theatrical abounds in a Broadway production of Blithe Spirit, where the spirit is definitely not blithe!
Enter Mickey Kelly's noir world, a surreal complexity of scam artists, drug dealers, thieves, mobsters, and killers.
Are our animal companions angels or demons? Our friends or our betrayers? 13 Claws, the third anthology by The Mesdames of Mayhem contains 17 animal crime stories by established, critically acclaimed authors as well as three tales (pun intended) by newcomers to the genre.
Seven short stories of suspense, mystery, and detection by the author of the Paul Manziuk and Jacquie Ryan mysteries. Includes personal notes by the author on the writing of each story.
Twisted tales of time...and crime.
The detectives are frenetic, the villains are diabolic, the situations bounce from hilarious to macabre, and the pace is always unrelenting in this collection by a master crafter of the genre.
Award-winning writer Billie Livingston explores the universal craving for connection, both emotional and physical.
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