THEIR OVERCOATS STEAMED in the red-hot glow of the tiny stove, the steam rising to form ice on the ceiling of the cramped canvas tent. After a day’s slogging up and down the pass, they were each man and woman among them soaked to the skin, but it was so cold no one was willing…
A FEW MINUTES AFTER he’d gotten home from work, the door bell rang. He carried the beer he’d just uncapped to the door. On the landing stood two men in suits. “Okay,” he said, “this can’t be good.” —”Gold Fever” Only in e. On Amazon, Amazon.uk, and Amazon.au. Also iTunes, Barnes & Noble and Kobo.
“THEY’RE OVERGRAZING THEIR RANGE.” “True.” “If we don’t reduce their population there’ll be fuck all left to hunt.” “Also true,” Neri said. “They savaged us the last two times we tried to establish some control over their activities, to the point that the population of the various packs are now seriously out of balance.” —”The…
In the six months since she had been sworn in she had stumbled through her first arrest warrants, fumbled through her first search warrants, and muddled through her first arraignments. She had figured out how to set bail, and how high. She had issued half a dozen restraining orders, and had taken emergency action in one…
Read more “She had figured out how to set bail, and how high.”
When the phone rang he’d been curled up on his warm, wide couch, submitting happily to an enthusiastic and comprehensive ravishment by Alice Sampson, a pert young barista of nineteen, to whom Larry had given some thought to proposing. In this small town on stilts twenty-five miles north of the Arctic Circle the ratio of…
Read more “Even then, if you did get lucky, three months later your luck went south again.”
THE CALL CAME IN on Kate’s cell phone too early on a Monday morning. She was up but not necessarily coherent. “What?” “It’s Kurt Pletnikof, Kate.” “Your name on the display was the only reason I answered,” she said. “What?” “Victor Boatwright’s son is missing.” Steam rose from her first mug of the day, stopped…
…although this dentist she took me to in Anchorage, Dorman, was okay, even if he was way too tan to be an Alaskan. He likes Kate, I can tell, but then every man she’s ever met likes her. Except maybe all the ones she put in jail, and sometimes I’m not so sure about them.…
Read more “Except maybe all the ones she put in jail, and sometimes I’m not so sure about them.”
Sergeant Jim Chopin said that fully a third of the local callouts to the Niniltna trooper post involved Dulcey Kineen in some way. Either she was enticing men at the Roadhouse to drink so she could drink with them, or she was seducing men away from their wives and sweethearts, or she was vamping men…
The front trailer teetered on the edge of the road about fifty feet down the hill from where the rear one went over. Jim thought it might have had a chance if the snow berm had been higher. As it was, inertia and momentum took charge and over it went, rolling at least half a…
“A WOMAN,” KATE SAID. “The powder burns weren’t just on the shirt, they were under the flap of the pocket. Would Sturgus let a man get that close? And it was a .22, small, easy to use. And I’d put money on the woman being Mrs. Baxter.” —“Under the Influence” Only in e. On…
Read more “And I’d put money on the woman being Mrs. Baxter.”