Friday, August 22, 2008

"Friday Night Luck" by Edward D. Hoch

From: The Blue Religion ed. Michael Connelly. Little Brown and Company, 2008.

Working on a crime-scene cleanup crew, Will Blackstone aspires to be a police detective. His chances dim when he's caught smoking marijuana during a shift as a citizen volunteer, but on a whim he decides not to turn in his uniform and badge, and no one keeps after him about it.

Some days later, while cleaning up an apparent double-murder, Blackstone finds an address book the police have missed. The book leads him to believe the second man isn't dead. Blackstone does his best to investigate, imperiling himself in the process. A well-served blend of optimism and realism.

1 comment:

David Cranmer said...

I'll have to check this one out. Hoch's The Rock, in the most recent issue of EQMM, is also entertaining. According to the magazine they will be featuring the last story he was working next month.