Stories by Kieran Shea are bound to be well written and hard edged, so he's fast becoming one of those writers that can get me to spring for a copy of a magazine or open up one of the e-zines. His story "Passed" is in the current iteration of Plots with Guns, and it is well worth the read.
In it, a son gets a call from his death-row dwelling father in the hour before the needle. The son, a full grown man now, only has bad memories and no real desire to talk with his daddy, but then the request the father makes is a simple favor and, well, it is in his very last hour: pick up and deliver some funeral clothes.
The story has a lot of atmosphere and even though I kind of wished for a sligthly different ending, that might just be "Moral-me" talking. Anyway, check it out.
8 comments:
I think the son deserved some recompense for the life he'd led so I'm okay with it. A great story.
Kieran always brings it. The man's got prose-style to spare...
He's one of the best. His dialogue is always fantastic. Good call.
Patti, I'd agree about deserving, but I'm a tiny bit worried about how we built up to that point. Still, a solid story. I read his EQMM story awhile back and that story left me with niggling doubts about what was happening at the end. That could just be my own brand of denseness.
As for prose-style and dialogue, absolutely.
I was also disappointed with the ending - there's a lot Shea could have done with that unexpected inheritance, but after all the (incredibly well-written) emotional angst that preceded it, I would have liked a more emotionally deep ending. It's like, once he had the money, all those years of hatred etc. just vanished in a nanosecond.
Gee, I just found out Gerald commented on this. Believe it or not I wrote it as a "ghost" story initially. I like interpretive endings, the stone in the shoe, will he or won't he, the kock at the door and blackout. Thanks for commenting.
just so we're clear here...the KNOCK at the door, not the KOCK at the door. jesus. red-eye from b'con, kinda punchy....
Steven wrote the above review of "Passed", of course, but I did mention his review on Twitter.
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