A Great Collection of Crime Fiction

I’m delighted to be a part of the new kid on the crime fiction block, The Crime Cafe 9 Book Set, spearheaded by New York Times best-selling author Debbi Mack. It’s a collection of full-length fiction from the writers who appeared on her excellent Crime Cafe podcast, such as these cool kids:

• Russian Roulette by Austin Camacho
• An All-Consuming Fire by Donna Fletcher Crow
• Savage Nights by W.D. Gagliani
• A Memory of Grief by Dale T. Phillips
• No Game for a Dame by M. Ruth Myers
• Glass Eye by Ben Sobieck (hey, that’s me!)
• Gypsy’s Kiss by Jim Winter
• 23 Shades of Black by Kenneth Wishnia
• Waist Deep by Frank Zafiro

There are also loads of bonus interviews to check out, too.

Mack is gunning to get The Crime Cafe 9 Book Set into your Kindle for 99 cents, which is a tremendous bargain. I highly encourage you to pick this up. You can’t even buy the standalone version of Glass Eye from me for 99 cents.

But Wait! There’s More!

Mack wouldn’t just settle on one collection. She popped on a fresh editor’s cap and cranked out two. The Crime Cafe Short Story Anthology also features work by guests on her podcast. This is another must-read, and it’s once again only 99 cents. At some point this is charity, not book-selling, but I digress.

Here’s the hot lineup:

• How I Found a Cat, Lost True Love, and Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo by Bill Crider
• Steamroller by Sasscer Hill
• The Very Old Man by Jenny Milchman
• A Glint of Metal by A.J. Sidransky
• Jasmine by Debbi Mack

And here’s where you can inject these fine stories directly into your Kindle.

Characters and Their Weapons

Rather than beat you over the head with how obvious it is that you need to go buy this collection right now, I figured I’d poll these fine writers about the weapons they selected for the characters in their stories. I hope it sheds light on your own projects.

Zack Taylor is a man who hates guns, after his younger brother was accidentally killed. Zack now uses only his wits and physical skills against opponents, putting him at a decided disadvantage.

~Dale T Phillips, author of A Memory of Grief

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My 1940s P.I., Maggie Sullivan, prefers her .38 Smith & Wesson, but she’s an equal opportunity weapons employer. In Shamus in a Skirt, with no gun available, she swings a heavy silver tea tray like a softball bat with great effect. In another book she stabs the long shaft of her decorative lapel pin into an attacker’s eyeball.

~M. Ruth Myers, author of No Game for a Dame

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The main weapon used in my three books starts with the letter W. I know, you’re probably thinking it must be some kind of esoteric, little known martial arts device, right? I mean, what weapons are left after you take out gun or knife or poison? Well, a lot of them, but not many that start with W.

Will. Weakness. Wherewithal.

See, I write domestic thrillers. My heroines are not accustomed to fighting – and they all have some flaw that has kept them from being brave when they needed to be in the past. But now they have to (wo)man up. By facing their inner weaknesses, by looking around them and using what’s available for battle, and by applying a massive amount of will they didn’t know they possessed, they’ll do one more W.

Win.

~Jenny Milchman, author of The Very Old Man

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The only time I recall Sam McRae using a weapon is in the fourth novel, Deep Six. Her private eye friend insists she buy a gun to protect herself, and she ends up with a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson (also known as a Ladysmith). I’ve shot exactly that type of gun myself and figured if I could, then so could Sam.

The interesting thing is that she ends up defending herself with a set of keys and the element of surprise, but gets the weapon from her attacker and thinks about killing him, but doesn’t.

~Debbi Mack, editor of this collection and author of the Sam McRae series

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I had a complex killing machine that made a murder appear like a suicide.

~A.J. Sidransky, author of A Glint of Metal

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I might just possibly get the prize for the most unusual murder weapon – a bar of soap.

My father was a plumber. As a child I often helped him with odd jobs around the house and recall him often singing the praises of the usefulness of a simple bar of soap. I can still see him rubbing the threads of an obstreperous pipe to make it screw smoothly into a link.

And my mother always picked up a bar of soap by the sink and ran it over her finger before removing a too-tight ring. As I still do today.

“Best lubricant there is,” I was told.

So when my sneaky and opportunistic murderer needed to “grease the slide” to turn an innocent game – well okay, the game wasn’t so innocent, but it wasn’t supposed to end in murder – into something much darker, he used the “weapon” offered by the bathroom of their B & B.

~ Donna Fletcher Crow, author of An-All Consuming Fire

As for me, I gave my protagonist in Glass Eye a knife made out of a lawnmower blade and paracord. This sounds novel, but it’s actually fairly typical in the world of homegrown knifemaking, although the metal is shaped into a knife. It’s not just a lawnmower blade on a stick. If you find something like that laying on the ground, look for the broken lawnmower and an ambulance.

Now Go Get the Collections

You heard me. Click here to get the novel collection, then go get the short story collection. When you’re finished doing that, come back here and leave a comment about how smart you are for picking up these incredible bargains.