"Delta Double-Deal"
Cisroe Perkins, owner
of The Kozy Krib BBQ joint in Houston and operator of a sometime private
investigation agency is a savvy, slow-to-anger knight in the
modern tradition. Once pushed to
see justice done, Cisroe is a formidable force.
Calling upon his histoy as a soldier, his success as a black man surviving
and thriving in the South, and his instinct for knowing the shadows of the
human heart, Cisroe goes to all lengths to see justice done, even if it means
he himself must sometimes run on the raw edge of the law. The
PI’s first two appearances are in story form.
A longer, novel-length work entitled THE HEIR OF JUSTICE is underway.
"Delta
Double Deal" was nominated for
Mystery Writers of America "Edgar" Best Short Story Award!
Delta Double-Deal - Excerpt
"Ladder Work"
Picking cherries on the Pacific Coast fruit run in the Sixties, Dacey Ann Adams crosses paths with a man she hoped to never see again: her jailbird father. Along the way, she uncovers a secret that begins the long road to healing the wound that drove them apart.
Ladder Work - Excerpt
"Clackin' the Bones"
In jail on a trumped-up charge,
Cisroe Perkins, P.I. and restaurant owner, is invited along on a jailbreak.
He
refuses until he overhears a hit called on a young man from his neighborhood.
In
moments he finds himself on the street evading the law while chasing down a
would-be assassin.
Clackin' the Bones - Excerpt
"Jojo's Gold"
Down-and-outers in a rich beach town: one woman, three men, each with their talents to survive. The one with a dream, though, didn’t. Now it is left to the rest of them to persist in finding the truth outside of the official explanation. Two of them don’t wait for the elusive thing called justice. They find a way to recycle his few belongings and honor the gold of his dream.
"Black Zak and the Heart Attack"
They say a cat scratch can bring a deadly fever. One laid-back kitty would assert that’s just another scurrilous attack on his kind. People should mind their own business. Except they don’t. And when they don’t, when they go looking for trouble, raising chaos, generally disturbing the peace the way that only bipedal primates can, sometimes they need a lesson in common etiquette. If that doesn’t take, then nothing knows fury like a furry mammal of the feline kind, and Black Zak is the one to deliver it.
Black Zak and the Heart Attack - Excerpt
"MISCAST"
(Written as Micki Marz)
In Vegas you can reinvent yourself with every visit depending on the size of your playing stash or the extent of your moral courage. You can play a variety of roles, be a different kind of person than you are back home. Mark Mandel Korn came from California with his girlfriend to play fisherman, then gambler, and then go home again after a sweet vacation, but when he winds up in an accidental encounter with the kind of low-life characters that live on the fringe of even a fringe town, he is cast in the role of a lifetime.
Commander Paul
Ooten’s a real family man. That’s what I heard all the time. I’d seen him with
his family at a state patrol picnic once. Pretty wife. Two kids, about eight,
ten.
And I saw him one night, behind a motel near Tannersville, coming down the
stairs from the second floor, Trooper Flannery in front of him.
I had just gotten in my car after coming out of a restaurant. Parked perpendicular to the restaurant, nose in to the motel, I went to wipe moisture off the side mirror and then looked up. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. The light over the staircase and landing was fuzzy from moist air. The couple had long coats on. I watched them walk over patchy snow to her car. She got in, and a different light, coming from the motel sign near the street, hit her face, brighter, paler. Paul shut her door. She rolled down the window, and he leaned over and kissed her, then stood watching as she pulled away. The next day I had a hard time looking at him.