Torn and Frayed is the seventh offering in Beat to a
Pulp’s Drifter Detective series. It’s a novella length piece. This is the first
in the series written by Cranmer. Previous installments have been written by
Garnett Elliott: 1. The Drifter Detective, 2. Hell Up in Houston, 3. The Girls
of Bunker Pines, by Wayne D. Dundee, 4. Wide Spot in the Road, Elliott again 5.
Dinero Del Mar, and by Alec Cizak, 6. Between Juarez and El Paso.
The main character in this series is Jack Laramie,
who is the grandson of Legendary US marshal Cash Laramie, created by Edward
Grainger. Jack Laramie is a WWII vet who roams post WWII Texas in a rickety
DeSoto with a horse trailer hitched on the back. He is an occasional PI. Jack
Laramie has many of the characteristics of his grandfather, although perhaps a bit less of a total bad
ass. He takes on a case, gets into a mess, and somehow extricates himself,
although it is seldom pretty. Along the way, he gets beat on and does some
beating back, and the series seldom ends with a clear cut: “good guys win”
scenario.
Torn and Frayed follows this general pattern. Jack
decides to take a break from the road and PI work and takes a job as a ranch
hand. Turns out the rancher has a past that is coming back to haunt him, most
specifically in the form of a daughter who is not what her father thinks she
is. A lot of unpleasant history gets revealed along the way.
Like most in the Drifter Detective series, Torn and
Frayed does not tie the story up in a nice pretty package at the end. There’s
messiness and ugliness and it’s hard to say that anyone really wins. They
survive, at a cost. But this series has real sense of realism running through
it and Torn and Frayed fits well into this pattern. I much enjoyed it. There
is, in addition, a bonus story at the end, “Missing,” which features Cash
Laramie himself.
HWA Poetry Showcase, Volume II, Edited by Peter Adam Salomon, Published by Horror
Writers Association.
This
is a wonderful collection of dark poetry. It also contains tributes to two
respected members of HWA who have passed away recently. The work begins with a
tribute to Rocky Wood, long-term president of HWA. I didn't know him but have
heard many great things about him. The work ends with a tribute to Tom
Piccirilli, and with one of Tom's fine poems, "Protected," which was
the last poem he completed before his death. I knew and respected Tom through
his work.
The
poems here are meaty and all of high quality, ranging from the creepy, to the
gory, to the thoughtful, to the humorous. There are too many really good ones
to mention individually. Some really nice efforts from the likes of Bruce
Boston, Marge Simon, Kathryn Ptacek, and Corrine De Winter. Some others that
particularly moved me were: The Cry of Autumn Stars by Mark Fuller Dillon,
Fiend by Annie Neugebauer, Into Old Mill Creek by Ian A. Patton, The Tune by
Lance Davis, Midnight at the Hub City Cafe by Lynette Mejia, and The Man Who
Disappears by Robert Perez. I also have a poem in this collection, called
R.O.A.D, which stands for The River of Angel’s Dreaming. I was very happy to be
included in this collection.
