Cold Pulp Trio

Three hard-boiled stories that hark back to the days of Black Mask and Astounding Science Fiction.

The first tale is a novella that introduces private dick Jay Dafoe. He’s in a dirty business, and cold hard cash has always made up for twinges his conscience might occasionally feel, or so he thought until he’s hired to find a missing daughter. How does the amoral Dafoe handle the horror he unwittingly becomes entwined with?

The second story finds Dafoe doing what he thought was routine work for a lawyer. What he doesn’t know is that he is the final pawn in a tragedy that was 30 years in the making. Some sins, Dafoe finds out, can’t be forgiven.

The third story is a study of a thug with a badge. Ben Andropov is a cop. The bosses are management, and the beat is the moon. Management wants order and doesn’t care how it’s kept. Andropov is a low-level enforcer of the status quo, having used his natural brutality to escape the drudgery and poverty of the everyday citizen. Seventeen years he’s been a cop, and it’s starting to take its toll. Solving a simple murder winds up inflicting more damage to what’s left of his crippled soul and there’s no way out.

Cold Pulp Trio is hard-boiled noir. American as hollow point bullets.