"Crime does look profitable, these days! Never have we had such a torrential or varied response from would-be Litro contributors.
Valerie O’Riordan’s short ‘The Explosion of Josiah Bounderby’ will knock you for six, while Kevin Brown’s ‘Odds Are’ depicts the sorry triumph of modern fear. Iphgenia Baal’s smart squib is anchored in forensic contemporary observation, in contrast with Larry Lefkowitz’s brave venture into Holmesian rigour, bringing you the story for which Conan Doyle’s readers were famously ‘not yet prepared’.
We are also proud to continue our ‘Gabriel Josipovici mini-series’: if you enjoyed December’s ‘The Two Lönnrots’, skip straight to his latest short, ‘Love Across the Borders’. This and Phil Bennett’s superb ‘Mikel’, an evocation of an autistic child’s experience of civil conflict in Chile, keep faith with Litro’s aim to bring the whole world to you in short stories.
Lastly, we have poetry from two writers who know their crime backwards: one from Paul Lyalls and four from the late great Charles Bukowski. No-one ever said the Post pays…
Sophie Lewis
Editor"
Here's a little snippet from the Josipovici story:
"- Take your coat, Veronica says to her son as the 11.52 express from Milan glides soundlessly into the main line station of Geneva and comes, almost imperceptibly, to a stop. Make sure you haven’t forgotten anything.
On the platform she takes his hand. – Can you see a taxi sign anywhere? she asks him.
- There, Mum! he says, swerving off suddenly to the left. Once again she marvels at how big he has grown in the past few months.
In the taxi she gives the driver an address and sits back, peering short-sightedly at the passing houses.
- Are we going to see Philippe?
- Not now. We’re going to the hotel first.
- And then we’re going to see him?
- No. Tomorrow morning."
[continue reading]
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