Created by Joseph H. Walker
“Heston says you used to be a cop.”
— the opening line in every story
Yep. TIM CHADWICK used to be a cop. A detective in Major Crimes. But he drank. And now he’s no longer a cop.
When asked by a concerned waitress at his why he’s no longer a police officer, his reply might break your heart.
“I’ve been in here every night since you got hired. What do you think happened?”
Now he limits himself to five drinks a night. Always at Heston’s bar. Never at home — he doesn’t keep any booze there. He never drinks during the day, and he only drinks five. He fears the day he’ll order a sixth, although he truly believes that day is coming. So that’s it. Five drinks a night, and only at Heston’s.
Those are the rules that he lives by in this series of short, noir-tinged stories by acclaimed short story writer Joseph S. Walker, and so far, those rules seem to be working for Tim. And that’s where he’d be every night, but for Heston, the owner and bartender, who keeps sending people who need help Tim’s way.
Not that Tim’s a cop or anything anymore. He’s not even a private investigator. And’s he’s not looking for work.
Nor has he any big financial need. He lives in a dump of an apartment in some unnamed city and doesn’t have a car. His pension keeps him afloat. Yet, he’s something of a touch for a good sob story.
But mostly he looks at these rinky-tink little jobs as a mere diversion; a way to kill the daylight hours until his nightly appointment at Heston’s. And they are mostly little jobs. That they turn into major crimes of one sort or another (sometimes on Tim’s part) makes this one of the more intriguing short fiction series of the last few years.
The stories are short, tough little nuggets, hard and straight to the point, without a lot of window dressing. Like, we never find out why, exactly, Tim was fired from the police, or why Heston (who has no speaking lines) keeps sending people over to talk to him, making them, thankfully, surprisingly wallow-free (a rarity these days), with just enough of a dusting of heart to make you care. They take unexpected hops, and Tim’s “solutions” are sometimes surprising.
More, please…
SHORT STORIES
- “What They Say I Used to Be” (2020, Hoosier Noir Two)
- “Filthy Looker” (May 2022, Mystery Magazine)
- “Some Summer Day, Baby” (Fall 2022, Guilty Crime Story Magazine #6)
- “Making the Bad Guys Nervous” (2023, Black Cat Weekly #102)
COLLECTIONS
- Crime Scenes (2026) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
Twenty shotgun blasts of crime, including four featuring unlicensed PI Tim Chadwick.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
