I was coming out of Aldi when the boy punched me in the face. It wasn’t much of a punch. I didn’t even drop my three microwave chicken tikka masalas and two pints of milk. “What d’you do that for?”…
Blog Archives
A Shilling for a Copper
Graham was supposed to walk beside Bill, but somehow he was always half a pace behind. A brand new copper was ranked far behind a constable with twelve years on the job in his actions, so it felt right even…
Tagged with: crime fiction, Flash fiction, Microfiction, short story
Posted in Saturday Hooptedoodle
Posted in Saturday Hooptedoodle
Cold Freedom
You want to know why I was waving a knife around in that shop? It’s a fair question, constable, so I’ll give you a fair answer. It was because there wouldn’t be no kids in a booze shop. They might’ve…
Nose for a Wrong ‘Un
Seeing is believing. I’ll not let you or anyone else tell me otherwise. I knew he was a wrong ‘un the moment he came into the shop, which is why I had my beady eye on him in the first…
Bertha’s Handbag
“You can have the chocolate when we get home, Sam,” said Bertha. “You promised to be good and I promised you the chocolate if you were. But until we get home, I can’t tell if you were good the whole…
Fiction Review: Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
When Elmore Leonard wrote his ten rules of writing, he opened with: Never open a book with weather. Yet eleven years earlier, he had opened one of his better-known novels with: When Chili first came to Miami Beach twelve years…
Tagged with: crime fiction, Elmore Leonard, Get Shorty, Humour, Satire
Posted in Book review: fiction, Wednesday Pontification
Posted in Book review: fiction, Wednesday Pontification
Walking Home
It’s good to be walking home. Good to feel the crush of snow beneath my feet and the muscular burn of movement beneath a jacket that, I must admit, is a little thin for February. It feels almost as…
The Fence and the Rhino
“So what you got for me?” Friendly face, neutral voice. Eric had found it such a useful way to start a deal that he’d grown a beard to hide his expressions. A lot of the youngsters he dealt with could…
Greater Minds: Anthony Horowitz on writing Sherlock Holmes
Anthony Horowitz was commissioned to write a Sherlock Holmes novel. His afterword described the process of planning a mystery novel. He starts with who murders whom and why, and works outward from there. He developed ten rules to be faithful…
Tagged with: Anthony Horowitz, Arthur Conan Doyle, crime fiction, Mystery, Sherlock Holmes, The House of Silk, Thriller
Posted in Greater minds, Wednesday Pontification
Posted in Greater minds, Wednesday Pontification
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