Settling the Score: An unpopular orchestra conductor dies of an apparent heart attack during a final rehearsal. Detective Jamie Swan’s instincts tell him it was murder – but who committed it, and how?
Give Me a Ring: Richard Miller and Fiona Kingston-Parker are shopping for their engagement ring when thieves attack them and steal it.
Lucky Sixpence: Forced to spend Christmas with her family after her relationship ends, a woman doesn’t feel especially lucky and finding the sixpence in the pudding only seems to make her day worse.
Super Family Ski Trip: Some members of the superhero team, The Chain Gang, are taking a ski holiday. There are people there from Tod’s past, but his attempts to re-establish connections with them only lead to misunderstandings. When Elaine McPherson is kidnapped for ransom, the Chain Gang must put these aside and stage a rescue mission.
The Fortune Teller: She is a fake, only pretending she can talk to dead people, taking people’s money and telling them what they want to hear. That doesn’t mean she cannot help someone.
The Sound of Variance: A rock singer’s genetic variant power starts to manifest, playing havoc with her voice and her career. There follows a battle between the heroes and the villains, who both want to recruit a new superheroine.
The Carol Singers: They go carol singing to discover which houses are empty, in order to burgle them. Until one day they discover something which stops them in their tracks.
The Mindstone: Tod still has the stone he took from Vladimir Henstock while rescuing his wife’s sister. The stone is exerting its power over him, increasing his dependence on it and magnifying his evil side. Can his wife and the rest of the Chain Gang stop it from destroying him completely?
Bad Husband: A man forgets his wife’s birthday and the race is on for him to find a present, but all the shops are closed. His final desperate solution will change their lives forever.
Forever: An old mansion is haunted by the ghosts of two children who died there years ago. The building’s new owners must find a way to get rid of them – or can they placate them?
General Information
Pages: 148
Published: 12 January 2020
ISBN: 9781659022797
First Page
Gideon Lawson was dead. Struck down during the final rehearsal for the promenade concert. DI Jamie Swan got the call one rainy Thursday evening, from the paramedic who’d attended the scene. Nora and Jamie often attended the same accidents and crime scenes. Nora, a large, motherly woman with frizzy hair, had been a paramedic for thirty years. She knew how to calm the most agitated of accident victims. The other thing her experience had given her was an incredible eye for detail and a propensity for hunches about accidents and emergencies which equalled Jamie’s for crime scenes.
‘I’m at the Unicorn Theatre,’ she said. ‘A member of the orchestra called us. They said Mr. Lawson keeled over from an apparent heart attack in the middle of Rule Britannia. He’s the conductor, you see. He was stone dead by the time we got here. It looks like a coronary on the face of it, but there’s something that doesn’t seem quite right to me. I think you should come and take a look.’
‘Okay,’ Jamie said. ‘Are all the musicians still there? Good. Ask them to wait, or at least leave their contact details before they go.’
Reasons not to read it
• It’s short stories.
• Some have superheroes in, but they are new ones which aren’t in Marvel or DC. Though some are in Julie Howlin’s novels.
• There are two Christmas stories.
• One is about a haunted mansion – aren’t there enough haunted mansion stories?
• There’s a fake fortune teller, a forgetful husband and a vengeful orchestra.
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Julie Howlin Author 