"The Recipe" by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera

From: Miami Noir ed. Les Standiford

This story by real-life P.I. Garcia-Aguilera opens with an out-of-work, fitness-obsessed husband threatening to kill his wife's aging dog. The wife, an investigator for a law firm, is forced to put off the argument to interview a client at the Dade County Jail.

According to the arrest report, the client, a Mr. Campos, killed his neighbor. Campos says he actually intended to kill his neighbor's loud-barking, free-pooping dog by means of a poisoned barbecued steak. After preparing the steak, Campos left it unattended for thirty minutes and returned to discover his neighbor sprawled by the barbecue.

Sickened at first, Campos became angry when he spotted steak juice around his neighbor's mouth. With his wife away on a trip, Campos decided to chop up the body and bury it as he would have the dog. The neighbor's gym-toned body proved tough to cut, however, so Campos decided to marinate it before finishing the job.

Repulsed as she is by Campos's graphic account, the P.I. comes away with a plan to resolve her situation at home.

This story seems long on exposition at times, but a final noir twist ties things together nicely.

"Dead Storage" by Christine Kling

From: Miami Noir, ed. Les Standiford. Akashic Books, 2006.

When her mother leaves, sixteen-year-old Kate is forced to live in a trailer park where she is sexually abused by her father. Pulled out of school, Kate spends most of her time reading novels, making up stories that she weaves into elaborate lies to the neighbors.

Despite this story's brevity, I quickly empathized with Kate and wondered if and how she would turn the tables on her father.

"The Timing of Unfelt Smiles" by John Dufresne

From: Miami Noir, ed. Les Standiford, Akashic Books, 2006.

Jordan Delreese is a highly successful motivation expert and church deacon who, in this story's opening sentence, is described bludgeoning his wife and two children to death. The description is provided by Wylie Melville, the psychotherapist helping police profile Delreese.

The story alternates between Melville's first-person P.O.V. and third-person descriptions of Delreese continuing his killing spree, drugging and drowning his ultra-religious parents. The two viewpoints contrast quite starkly: Melville's very human as he juggles the case with caring for his senile father; Delreese's hopeless and inevitable, its quoteless dialogue emphasizing how withdrawn he has become.