Book Reviews by Elizabeth A. White

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…)

No matter how much you think you have it figured out, you don’t. There’s always something waiting in the shadows to bite you in the arse. – Alan Slater

No good deed ever goes unpunished, or so goes the sardonic saying. It’s one Manchester-based double glazing salesman Alan Slater would have done well to keep in mind before agreeing to help his so-called friend, Les Beale, out of a jam.

Of course, considering the jam in question involved helping Beale cover up a particularly nasty crime perhaps Slater should have seen the world of hurt he ends up in coming. Thankfully for readers of Ray Banks’ Dead Money, he did not.

Given that Slater is already having enough difficulty juggling his unsatisfied wife, impatient mistress, and declining career, the last thing he needs is to be burdened with someone else’s problems as well. Yet, somehow, he always seems to find himself out with co-worker Beale, a hard drinking, hard gambling bigot with a hair-trigger temper. Problems are Beale’s business, and business is good.

That is until he ends up on the wrong end of a rigged high stakes poker game. Unfortunately he doesn’t realize until he’s in too deep what’s going on, leaving him five figures in debt to the sort of people you don’t cross… or skip out on. Incensed, Beale confronts the person responsible for setting up the game, and that’s when things go from bad to worse. (more…)

He had to remember – his heart pumped too fast, he’d bleed out quicker; too slow, and he’d pass out. Had to maintain a balance if he was going to make it out of this.

Richie has recently been released from prison after serving a sentence for ABH (actual bodily harm) committed during the course of doing a job for local crime boss/drug dealer, Goose. Richie’s girlfriend wants him to make a fresh start and get a proper job, but only 18 and with no real education Richie soon finds himself back on Goose’s doorstep looking for work.

Though at first Goose doesn’t even remember him – rather insulting since Richie did more time than he otherwise would have had to because he wouldn’t tell the police who he was working for – Goose soon assigns Richie the task of dropping by another lowlife’s place, picking up a gun Goose has arranged for, and bringing it back. Sounds simple enough. But of course it’s not. It never is.

Things go sideways for Richie almost immediately, and the matter-of-fact manner in which the violence that ensues is portrayed speaks to the brutal environment Richie and those around him similarly situated function in as they attempt to improve their lives through the only path they see as being a realistic means to an end: crime. (more…)