COLD FIRE

A noir short story published in Hardluck Ezine.
http://www.hardluckstories.com/fall2004/Hardluck%20Stories/Cold-Myers.htm

Reviewed by Bob Tinsley - http://theshortofit.blogspot.com/2004/12/cold-fire.html


Monday, December 06, 2004

Cold Fire
"Cold Fire" by Cathy Myers, Hardluck Stories, Fall, 2004Unlike most of the stories that I've reviewed so far, this one had no speed-bumps, nothing that threw me back into the real world. Smoothly written . . . I was going to say easy to read, but somehow that doesn't seem right. Easy in the sense that the prose flowed, but not easy emotionally.This is a story that turned all of my expectations around. It wasn't until the ninth paragraph that I suspected Maxy was a woman. It wasn't until the twelfth paragraph that I knew she was a woman. The whole story was like that, the author leading you on, letting you make your conventional assumptions, then turning them around.This is an emotional story, not of emotions expressed, but of emotions repressed. They are there, hidden beneath the surface, roiling and conflicting, but you don't realize it until the end. Then you get hit between the eyes with a 2x4.This is a story that's going to stay with me a while.

RED RED ROSE

In C. Rowe – Myers newest Mallory mystery, Chief Detective Augustus Mallory faces one of the most bizarre and baffling cases of his career. When he transferred to the quiet East Texas community of Tyler, he never expected to be confronted with a serial killer. Faced with a labyrinth of conflicting clues, he struggles to unravel the workings of a psychotic mind and unmask the killer behind the “Rose” murders.

Pagan Mallory wanted to become a detective like her uncle, but when she was caught tampering with crucial evidence by FBI agent Demetri Ranoir, her ambition came to an abrupt end. Threatened with jail time and the termination of her uncle’s brilliant career, she offers herself as bait to trap the depraved psychopath.

C. Rowe – Myers weaves a tight web of intrigue and suspense around a mystery where love and passion result in death. In her usual break-neck style, Rowe-Myers again keeps readers on the edge of their seats as a trail of falling red petals leads them to the surprise ending of RED RED ROSE.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?ATH=C+ROWE%2DMYERS&userid=Xz6AGrAA2l

COMING SOON: SHADOWS OF ILLUSION

COMING SOON:  SHADOWS OF ILLUSION

FBI agent Andrea Weston was fascinated by the enigmatic Nicholas St. Claire and grateful when he rescued her from certain death—but what was his real agenda? To find out, she would be swept up in a world of terrorism, white slavery, seduction, and betrayal that would lead her from the Palace of Racheed Singh and the confines of his Turkish harem to the clandestine world of Black Ice.

Nicholas St. Claire was a highly skilled, highly trained operative cast in the role of a double agent. His cold, calculating mind and objective ruthlessness had allowed him success—a defender of right in a world corrupt and perverse. But Andrea Weston’s betrayal changed all that. Now, he lived for revenge.

Through the Shadows is the third book by C. R. Myers and the second in the Black Ice series—prequel to Black Ice/Shadowed Road. In her characteristic fast-paced style, she continues with the same exciting and unexpected plot twists that enticed readers through a labyrinth of mystery and intrigue in her first book, keeping them spellbound and on the edge of their seats.