The past year seems to have been a bonanza for short story collections, and editor Luca Veste proves that last is certainly not least with his collection Off the Record, which was released at the end of November.
Featuring a mind-boggling thirty-eight stories from a who’s who of the crime fiction community, Off the Record is structured around the clever premise of taking a classic song title and writing a story inspired by it. To avoid making this review ridiculously long, and to leave you plenty to discover fresh for yourselves, I will just mention a handful that stood out to me for one reason or another.
“Light My Fire” by AJ Hayes is an incredibly dark tale of a love triangle gone awry. What could have been a run of the mill story of revenge instead turns into a truly disturbing look at how one man’s journey out of the mouth of madness ends up being another’s entrance into it as they both seek answers to the murderous events of the past.
Ian Ayris’ “Down In The Tube Station At Midnight” features a working stiff bloke in the London Underground on his way to the daily grind. In what turns out to be an interesting twist, however, the grind in question isn’t quite what you may be expecting.
Iain Rowan tackled a biggie when he chose the legendary “Purple Haze” as his track, and he more than lives up to the challenge in this story of three well-to-do college boys who head into the projects looking to score drugs only to discover a high they never anticipated. (more…)
Edited by Nigel Bird and Chris Rhatigan, Pulp Ink is a blistering collection of 24 deliciously dark tales, each inspired by a song from the Pulp Fiction movie soundtrack. Murder and madness, sex and seduction, revenge and redemption, Pulp Ink has a little bit of everything going on. A few of my favorites:
