A Mystery Reader 001: Short Stories From New Voices

Cozy, Detective, or Amateur Sleuth - contemporary or fantasy - these short stories will keep you guessing right up to their quick end.

Mysteries come in many forms, and in many locations. Here we have contemporary, dystopian, and paranormal venues so you can immerse yourself from the first sentence in each of these short stories.

- A ghost who has to arrange her own scene-reenactment just to find out how she died.

- How a writer helps a woman find out why she is so sad all the time - from a diner bar stool.

- A private investigator assigned to find out the secret of nurses who can cure the incurable - but then becomes a patient when he breaks quarantine to save another's life.

- A detective who is ordered not to solve a perfect death.

These short stories will fit in the bits and pieces of your schedule, while you work to solve the crimes from wherever and whenever you are reading…

Short Story Anthology Containing:

- The Case of the Forever Cure by J. R. Kruze

- The Case of a Cruising Phantom by S. H. Marpel

- The Case of the Walkaway Blues by J. R. Kruze & S. H. Marpel

- The Spirit Mountain Mystery by S. H. Marpel & C. C. Brower

- The Tunnel People by R. L. Saunders

- Death by Advertising by J. R. Kruze

Excerpt:

(From "The Case of the Forever Cure")

IT'S HARD DETECTIVE work when you could only interview through thick glass while wearing a hazmat suit.

It's worse when you're trying to find out why someone is healing the terminally ill and being very successful at it.

Because since this one nurse took over, people had quit dying.

But the hospital wouldn't let them out of quarantine. Until my investigation was complete.

No pressure.

The problem was how I was getting paid. All in cash, Random serial numbers, unmarked and used bills. Occasionally someone included a note, printed out by a laser printer on common paper stock. No fingerprints on anything. Completely anonymous.

And all I wanted was they stay off my back if they wanted to keep it that way.

Because this coin had two faces. Let me do my job finding what you asked me to, or I'd find out the flip side as well.

That was the message I sent the last time I got a note from them with advice on it. And no more notes since.

I told them three weeks. Period. I'd solve it or give them their money back. Minus expenses.

No notes since. And I had under a week left, with no leads. Yes, I was getting a bit nervous.

But I didn't have to deal with perfectly healthy people who weren't even allowed to talk to their family. Or me.

It all depended on this one head nurse named Cathy…

© 2018 Midwest Journal Press (Rafbók): 6610000101948

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Rafbók: 5 september 2018