The Chaperon and Other Short Stories about Murder

Murder... few literary themes grip us more strongly than a well-planned and well-executed assassination or a random outburst of violence and mayhem. These stories provide both the chill of cold, calculated murders and the shock of unanticipated, uncontrollable dangers. Whether your taste run toward a classic "who dunnit?" or toward more contemporary psychological thrillers, you will love these tales of murder and capital crimes. Murder from unexpected quarters, that's what Rohit...
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Murder... few literary themes grip us more strongly than a well-planned and well-executed assassination or a random outburst of violence and mayhem. These stories provide both the chill of cold, calculated murders and the shock of unanticipated, uncontrollable dangers. Whether your taste run toward a classic "who dunnit?" or toward more contemporary psychological thrillers, you will love these tales of murder and capital crimes. Murder from unexpected quarters, that's what Rohit Rangarajan's "The Chaperon" gives us in this volume's title story. Rangarajan lets us explore murder from a detective's perspective as the story's lead character investigates the work of a serial killer. It's a race with time as our detective seeks to discover the killer's identity before the perpetrator turning his most recent kidnapping victim into yet another murder victim. In Richard Martens's "A Winter Memory," a sexual predator is killed in an outburst of unthinking vengeance, leaving a small town sheriff to decide between following the law and following justice. Murder in an odd location, that's what Marcella Wachtel's "Intermission" provides. Her socially invisible witness observes an ill-fated love triangle spilling one another's blood in an upscale theatre. Lynn Marie Penedo's "Until By Death We Part" allows the reader to share in a neglected spouse's secret glee over the death of a spouse. A husband, completely free of guilt, seeks to remain free of the law, while evading the police and curious co-workers. If all violence is inhuman, then William Walz has created the most inhuman violence of all. Billy, the brutalized and brutalizing focus of "Whipping Boy," invites us to reflect on the limits of the human impulses to anger and violence. How truly and uniquely human are those impulses? Murder-routine, yet unexpected-occurs early in Marcella Wachtel's second story in this collection. "Two Fathers" personalizes the violence which occurs with stunning regularity in the Occupied West Bank of Palestine. In a land often divided by ancient hatreds, these two fathers find commonality in their shared experiences of mourning over a lost child. Autumn Wylo's "Toys of Men" will leave readers worried about allowing any random thoughts of greed, ambition and dissatisfaction to lodge in their minds. Giving host, even temporarily, to such thoughts could bring lethal consequences... Or worse, it could leave one to face decades of life in a desperate near-death state-alive enough to watch the love of your life learn to love another. Murder comes in many forms. Perhaps Lauren Cunningham's Adam, a man of "Good Intentions," should have kept this fact in mind when he signed his contract in blood. Nothing that begins in a contract of blood can end well, can it? Murder is messy business and in Megan Rose's world of "Chaos," you never know who the real victim will be. Good story-telling like this can be as unpredictable as any crime of passion. Finally, Michael Bitanga, one of our favorite writers, reminds the reader of the literal messiness of murder in "Sunday Cleaning," a tale which reminds us that it's more difficult to dispose of a body-both physically and psychologically-than most people expect.As always, all of these stories have won the highly competitive Phyllis Scott contest for emerging authors of short story fiction. We are proud to bring these emerging authors to our readers' attention!