“I told her I took care of it. That they wouldn’t be bothered again.” – Joe Pike Funny how a seemingly insignificant decision can have such life-altering consequences. Surely Joe Pike couldn’t possibly have envisioned that a quick stop to put air in his tires would set in motion a chain of events that would [...]

“When the system fails, someone has to uphold justice.” – Dillon Kincaid Lucy Kincaid graduated from college with a double major in psychology and computer science, has interned with the United States Senate and Arlington County Sheriff’s Department, and currently works as both an intern with the D.C. Medical Examiner’s Office and volunteer for Women [...]

Today I am pleased to welcome author Anthony Neil Smith (aka Doc Noir) to Musings of an All Purpose Monkey. In addition to his work as co-creator and editor of Plots With Guns, he’s also the author of five novels and dozens of short stories. Today he’s here to talk about his latest novel, Choke [...]

Day after day I go out with photographers who are tourists of the war. – Nguyen Pran Linh One would be hard pressed to think of a war zone as a tourist destination. Yet, for the photojournalists in Tatjana Soli’s The Lotus Eaters that is exactly what, in a perverse way, war-torn Vietnam becomes for [...]

Investigation Discovery is launching a new series called James Ellroy’s L.A.: City of Demons, in which author James Ellroy (The Black Dahlia, L.A. Confidential) takes a fresh look at some of Hollywood’s most notorious crimes from the past to the present. The six-part series showcases Ellroy’s larger-than-life personality, and debuts tomorrow night (Wednesday, January 19th [...]

A cluster of curious tourists had stopped to gawp at us like we were another display at the Fair – the World’s Biggest Fools, perhaps. – Otto Amlingmeyer First introduced to readers in Holmes on the Range, brothers Gustav “Old Red” and Otto “Big Red” Amlingmeyer are cowboys turned detectives in late 1890’s America. World’s [...]

Yesterday I reviewed Chuck Wendig’s new short story collection Irregular Creatures. Today I am thrilled to welcome the demented man himself for a guest blog. Cats show up in three of the stories found within IRREGULAR CREATURES. Not inappropriate, I suppose. Cats are definitely irregular around the margins. Quirky, kooky critters. And yet they have [...]

‘Neat’ wasn’t the word Benjamin was looking for. Might as well call the ocean ‘wet’ or a tornado ‘windy.’ Still, he nodded, because he had no other words to describe that which was all around him. – “The Auction” Feeling a little post-holiday blues? Housebound by the Snowpocalypse? Well I’ve got something to occupy your [...]