The
Stable Vices Affair
The
Chandler Affairs Book 1
By
G.W. Renshaw
Genre:
Paranormal Mystery
Veronica Chandler has worked hard
to become a private investigator. At the age of eight she got a baton
for Christmas—just like Mummy’s. At 12, she started working at
her father’s restaurant so she’d have the money for the
investigator’s course. At 16, she became an intern with the Calgary
Police Service. And now, at 18, she's the youngest licensed PI in
Alberta.
As her ex-boyfriend can attest,
she has the skills. As a psychotic killer discovers, she has the
will. Now she’s ready to take on the world: To find the lost and
expose the faithless.
None of which prepare her for a
house that can’t decide whether it’s empty, one or two perverse
dwarfs with a bizarre hold over their victims, a kinky pony show, and
a secret global organization. Every clue leads to more questions.
Four lives depend on Veronica finding the answers.
And then there’s that pesky
losing-your-soul thing.
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There was sharp pain in my foot as the
bat struck it, but my boot absorbed most of it. I wiggled
harder. My coat got caught on something,
and I strained to get away. Just as he grabbed both of my
legs, and hauled me out into the street
again, my hand grabbed something hard and cold.
There was no thought of consequences as I
came out into the sunlight. Danielle’s gun was heavy
in my frozen hands as I raised it to the
looming shadow overhead.
At that range it would have been almost
impossible to miss. As he screamed again I squeezed the
trigger. A hole appeared in his chest. He
looked surprised.
I managed to squeeze off another round as
he began to crumple straight down. It reminded me of
video of a building being demolished with
explosives.
Two rounds. Centre of mass. Just like in
the simulator. I would have shot him more times if I could
have gotten my fingers to work faster. I
wasn’t consciously trying for a double tap.
The sound of the shots was deafening.
Afterwards, all I could hear was a high-pitched whine in
my head. My ears were not impressed by
all they’d been through in the past few minutes.
I couldn’t breathe. Maybe it was the
cold.
Pain. Cold. Wetness. Silence. Blood.
For a blessedly long time I lay there
staring at Danielle. Waiting for the monster to rise again from
behind her.
Slowly, I started noticing other things.
People on the sidewalks were running away, or standing
with their mouths open. They were
probably screaming, but I couldn’t hear anything but that
whine.
The
Prince and the Puppet Affair
The
Chandler Affairs Book 2
Alyssa Blakeway is so submissive
it’s a miracle she left her house, let alone asked Veronica to find
out if her abusive husband is also cheating on her.
When Veronica finds out who
Collin Blakeway is actually going to see, things go from bad to worse
to deadly. They also challenge Veronica’s most deeply held beliefs
as she discovers that demons and magic are real.
It’s no longer a matter of
saving a marriage. Now she has to save the lives of Alyssa, her
sister Kali, an unknown woman, and herself. All while avoiding being
killed by her sister for acting stupidly.
If an arborist, a coven of
Witches, the Vatican, the Freemasons, a Native Elder, and an old
bicycle can’t save them, who can?
At that moment, something stabbed me
between my shoulder blades.
Stab might be too strong a word, but if
the mosquito was big enough that its proboscis had gone
through my track suit and jabbed my back,
it might be exactly the right word. It felt like I needed
to reach the spot between my shoulder
blades and pull it out before I passed out from blood loss.
Damn, that hurt. How big was that sucker?
During that half second of distraction I
tripped over a freaking lawn chair. It was one of those
cheap ones with nylon webbing and thin
aluminum tubing that makes a big racket when it falls
over with almost 60 kilograms of startled
private investigator tangled in it. That would have been
bad enough, but the deck also had a
built-in, recessed hot tub. I fell onto the cover.
Evidently, Collin didn't approve of rigid
pool covers. They probably cost too much for his taste.
Instead, he'd bought one of those cheap,
floating bubble-wrap things with no structural integrity.
Water leaped for joy, and made a big
splash as it went everywhere. My top half was soaked, my
feet were still tangled in the chair, and
my head was underwater.
At least the water was warm.
I floundered for entirely too long,
trying to do a reverse sit-up while my hands scrabbled to find
the edge of the tub. I managed to grab
it, and push myself out. By now, there was not much point
in trying to be stealthy, so I kicked the
chair free of my legs. Inside the house, a male voice was
bellowing. This was not going as well as
I'd hoped.
my trousers. I pushed my way through the
tree branches, and jumped for the top of the fence.
Despite the adrenaline fuelling my jump,
I wasn't even close. I slid down the fence boards, and
another branch caught me in the same spot
on my back.
On my second jump I didn't even get that
high. My clothing got caught on a branch, and I was
knocked off balance. I fell backward, and
rolled down the slope toward the garden.
It was a good thing that the glass cold
frame broke my fall.
The Kalevala Affair
The
Chandler Affairs Book 3
Being shot at and landing in
protective custody certainly cramps a PI’s style, so when a group
of collectors want Veronica to track down an historical artifact in
England, she jumps at the chance. They’ll even handle recovery, so
all she has to do is find the item. It’s a piece of cake.
There are a few details that were
left out. Everybody is after this thing. Veronica has to dodge
bullets meant for another PI, get chased all over Europe by Finnish
terrorists, tries not to violate every national park in the world,
and has to put up with an English investigator who insists on
accompanying her.
Of course, the artifact turns out
to be more dangerous than she was led to believe. Veronica has to
trust somebody who tried to remove her head, decide the fate of the
world, and survive an angry volcano. At least she’s getting paid
for it. If she can collect.
On the way back to our hotel we were
walking beside a park when Lana shoved me forward. As I
stumbled I saw a big man rushing toward
us from the direction of the trees. He was holding an
impressive-looking knife in a way that
told me he wasn’t an amateur with it. He was wearing a ski
mask.
Seriously? A ski mask? How cliché.
Lana had backed away and was starting her
capoeira dance. Since I was on the ground he ignored
me for the moment it took him to try to
figure out how to attack Lana. That gave me a chance to
spin around and drive my foot into the
side of his knee. He shifted his attention back to me just in
time, slashing the knife downward toward
my leg. I felt it catch on my jeans, then my foot
connected.
His knee buckled with a nasty sound and
he grunted. The knife stayed in his hand as he fell. His
noise-making didn’t last long as Lana
launched herself into the air almost simultaneously and
nailed him on his temple with her heel.
Her dress billowed out gracefully, and it would have
looked spectacular in slow-motion. I
don’t think he appreciated the sight before he became
extremely unconscious.
Lana looked completely unruffled as she
held out her hand to help me up. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” That’s when I noticed some blood
on my leg. His knife had been sharp enough that the cut
wasn’t hurting yet. Through the slice in
the fabric it didn’t seem too bad.
She checked his neck for a pulse. “He’s
still alive.”
I kicked his knife further from his hand.
“That’s a relief. I don’t envy him how he’ll feel when he
wakes up.”
Lana peeled back his mask. “How
interesting.”
It was our book worm from the Helsinki
airport.
“What do we do now?” Lana said.
“I’m not sure. What’s the emergency
number in Finland?”
“Try 1-1-2. That’s the European Union
emergency number.”
I’d just gotten my phone out when a
police car coasted to a stop beside us. A young constable got
out with a wary eye on us.
“Mitä tapahtui? ”
“I’m sorry, we don’t understand,” Lana
said.
He switched to English. “What happened?”
“This man attacked us with a knife. We
defended ourselves.”
The
True Love Affair
The
Chandler Affairs Book 4
Veronica has just gotten home
after solving a minor case in Mexico involving kidnapping, betrayal,
bank fraud, and a Colombian drug cartel when an old acquaintance show
up to hire her. Somebody has been committing impossible murders all
over the world, and Veronica is the only person qualified to stop the
killer before the body count soars.
The problems start with her
client. Can she trust a demon prince not to send her back to therapy
or worse for another year? What, if any, is his hidden agenda? Is
anything at all as it seems?
Veronica thought she had a handle
on magic and demons, but as soon as she starts investigating it’s
obvious that all the rules have changed. She’s playing in the big
leagues now, and she’s going to have to move heaven and hell to
keep humanity alive. Starting with herself.
Now, if she can only survive
dinner with her family, a blind date, a small immigration problem,
and working with the federal cabinet, it’s possible that all will
be well.
Or at least as well as it can be
when you have to deal with insane immortals and a talking cat.
There was almost no light in my room, but
by the red glow of the numbers on my alarm clock I
could see vague shadows in front of me at
the foot of the bed. They looked suspiciously like a pair
of feet that were blocking my way to the
door. My eyes followed the shadows up the dark mass to a
quiet blue flame hovering in midair. It
moved, becoming brighter for a moment. There was a sound
The smell wasn’t tobacco.
It was brimstone.
I scurried backward, crab-walking with my
butt almost on the floor, until my head hit the night
table. The lamp on top teetered and fell
to the carpet. I felt the lamp shade brush by my hair as it
narrowly missed my head. The crunch of a
breaking light bulb was close and immediate.
Adrenaline poured through my system
again. I chose to interpret it as anger rather than fear. A
male voice with a distinctive lisp
familiar to a previous generation of movie-goers spoke in the
darkness.
“Nice reflexes, doll, but you should put
something on. You look cold.”
I knew that voice. It was far too late
for modesty, so I stood up, pushed past the figure, and put on
the robe that was hanging on the door. I
tied the belt by touch, viciously yanking the ends as I did
so. I would have a hell of a time getting
it undone later, but that was the least of my worries.
I found the wall switch without much
trouble and flicked it upward with a satisfying snap. The
result was painfully bright, and I
couldn’t help blinking several times. It didn’t make any
difference to what I saw, which was
exactly what I was hoping I wouldn't.
Humphrey Bogart, circa 1941, stood in my
bedroom, dressed in a well-tailored, three-piece, pin-
stripe suit. He’d tossed his fedora over
the post at the bottom of my bed.
I really liked normal cases. None of them
involved Sam Spade showing up in my bedroom at oh
dark seventeen. Especially considering
what the bastard had done to me the last time we’d met.
He waved the sulphurous cigarette at me
in greeting, and took another puff. How do you even
smoke sulphur? The stench tickled my
throat, and I made a great effort not to cough. I'd be
damned before I'd let him make me cough.
“Put that out. You’ll stink up the whole
apartment.”
“Whatever you say, toots.” The cigarette vanished
as if it had never existed. The smell did not go
with it.
Research is Not a Four-letter Word
I hate reading something by an author who
doesn’t get the details right. There’s a novel set in my home town that describes
a car making a turn that is physically impossible. Most readers won’t spot the
mistake, but those who live here will and it’s irritating. You don’t want to
irritate your readers unnecessarily.
I go the other way. I over-research
everything.
I know that Calgary police cars have air bags,
that the dispatch computer is mounted between the front seats, and that there’s
an interior trunk release lever. Does it matter to most readers? Probably not,
but I it gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling to know that police officers who read
the car crash scene don’t throw the book across the room in disgust.
That’s great for you, I hear you saying, but
who really cares? Doesn’t lots of picky detail get in the way of the story?
It can. Nobody wants to read twenty pages of magical
ritual when you can do the same thing in a few sentences or paragraphs. “He
carefully drew the circle in chalk, put on his robe, and began the long-winded
incantation. An hour later, the demon appeared in the triangle outside the
protective circle.” Done.
But this description is so minimal that it
doesn’t give the reader a sense of what’s really happening. The original
sources are readily available from bookstores, libraries, and online. It can
add to the atmosphere if you quote the first few sentences of the actual
incantation to show your readers how tedious it really is. Read the original
descriptions of the demons that can be summoned so you know how they act. Once
you have the details, you can leave most of them out, but the ones you keep
will make your readers think, “wow, this guy really knows his stuff.” And that
will help sell the actual fiction. Why do you think so many horror movies say
they are “based on true events” even though they aren’t? We’re much more
involved if we think it could happen in real life.
G.W.
Renshaw lives in Calgary, Alberta with his lovely wife and Romulus
the cat. He likes to write stories that range from the unusual to the
bizarre.
He
has picked up a variety of skills over the years: gunner in the
Canadian Forces, practitioner of Iwama-style Aikido, Krav Maga, and
Chito Ryu Karate, computer programmer, Linux druid, Search and Rescue
manager, caving, rock climbing, and archery. He learned man tracking
from Terry Grant (the original ManTracker on
TV). He also learned a variety of medieval skills while in the
Society for Creative Anachronisms.
G.W.
writes when he isn’t maintaining the web site for When
Words Collide,
being beaten senseless by his young padawan, or working at Mount
Royal University, the University of Calgary Faculty of Veterinary
Medicine, or the Cumming School of Medicine.
He
claims to have a firm grip on reality, but seems unaware that it is
slowly turning purple. He will happily watch just about any film with
monsters in it.
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