Brick Callahan Rides Again

What happens when you mix a ruthless strip-club owner, an elderly real-estate lawyer, a teenage runaway, a divorced L.A. accountant and an irascible eighty year old Boston private detective? You get "Uncle Brick and The Little Devilz," the second installment in the Uncle Brick mystery series, featured now in the Summer 2010 issue of Mysterical-E.

When the grieving widow of a man police claim jumped to his death off a Chinatown apartment building visits Callahan Investigations claiming her husband was murdered, Brick agrees to take the case. The trail leads to the man's secretary, whose underaged runaway daughter is rumored to be working as a dancer at a local strip club.

Subtlety is not Brick Callahan's strong suit, and his plan for solving the case puts him on top of the very same Chinatown roof his client's husband recently swan-dived off, in the clutches of a murderous thug. Brick's fate rests in the hands of his nephew, an accountant by trade and a three-week veteran of Callahan Investigations. Things look grim, but Brick is not afraid to put his unconventional methods to the ultimate test.

The first Uncle Brick story, "Uncle Brick and Jimmy Kills," ran in last year's Summer issue of Mysterical-E and finished third in the Best Novelette voting for a 2010 Derringer Award, so this entry has big shoes to fill. I love the Uncle Brick series; it's completely different from anything else I write and so is a lot of fun.

If you get a chance, check the story out and let me know what you think. The link to the front page of Mysterical-E - one of the oldest and longest-running online mystery magazines - is here, and if you prefer to link directly to my story, "Uncle Brick and The Little Devilz," you can do so here.

I'm already planning the third installment in this series, tentatively titled "Uncle Brick and the L.A. Ex," hopefully to be found in a future issue of Mysterical-E. Thanks for reading!