Crimes in the Key of Murder

By Robert Jeschonek

Nobody cares who killed a down-on-his-luck piano player...except his brother, who happens to work for the crimefighting detective Sister Mayhem. Tearing up the underworld with her network of operatives--the Order of No Mercy--Sister Mayhem will stop at nothing to catch the killer. She's a master of disguise, a genius investigator, and a force of nature, but when the trail leads to a band of dirty-dealing musicians, she might have met her match. Lead singer Sheila Venus has genius, skills, and feminine wiles to rival Sister Mayhem's. Did her dark schemes lead to murder, or was the killing played in a different key echoing from a bloody, secret past? Sister Mayhem pulls out all the stops to solve the case and catch the killer, unless she becomes the next victim first. Don't miss this thrill-a-minute crime saga by award-winning storyteller Robert T. Jeschonek, a master of unique and unexpected crime fiction and mysteries that really pack a punch.

Reviews

"...Robert Jeschonek is a towering talent..." – Mike Resnick, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author

"Jeschonek ́s stories are delightfully insane, a pleasure to read..." – Fabio Fernandes, Fantasy Book Critic

"Robert Jeschonek is the literary love child of Tim Burton and Neil Gaiman—his fiction is cutting edge, original, and pulsing with dark and fantastical life. His stories suck me in and refuse to let me go until the last page..." – Adrian Phoenix, critically acclaimed author of The Maker's Song series and Black Dust Mambo

Contents

Story plus novel preview

About the Author

Robert T. Jeschonek is an award-winning writer whose fiction, comics, essays, articles, and podcasts have been published around the world. DC Comics, Simon & Schuster, and DAW have published his work. Robert was nominated for the British Fantasy Award for his story, "Fear of Rain." His young adult urban fantasy novel, My Favorite Band Does Not Exist, is now available from Clarion Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and was named one of Booklist’s Top Ten First Novels for Youth. Visit him online at www.thefictioneer.com. You can also find him on Facebook and follow him as @TheFictioneer on Twitter. For news on his latest online projects, visit the Pie Press website at www.piepresspublishing.com.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Jeschonek
• Release date: Nov 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466038363

Book preview

Crimes In The Key Of Murder

Crimes In The Key Of Murder

A Crime Story

Robert Jeschonek

Pie Press

Contents

Also by Robert Jeschonek

Crimes In The Key Of Murder

About the Author

Special Preview: The Masked Family

CRIMES IN THE KEY OF MURDER

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Copyright © 2018 by Robert Jeschonek

www.thefictioneer.com

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Cover Art Copyright © 2018 by Ben Baldwin

www.benbaldwin.co.uk

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Published in November 2011 by arrangement with the author.

All rights reserved by the author.

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A Pie Press book

Published by Pie Press Publishing

411 Chancellor Street

Johnstown, Pennsylvania 15904

www.piepresspublishing.com

Also by Robert Jeschonek

Six Crime Stories Volume One

The First Detect-Eve

The Masked Family

The Other Waiter

Crimes In The Key Of Murder

Just as Carver Moreau finished playing Caravan on the piano, someone hoisted him off his bench.  Someone, no doubt, who didn't realize they'd bitten off more than they could chew.

Because Carver was a world-class hand-to-hand fighter in the employ of none other than Sister Mayhem, bane of the underworld.

As powerful hands held Carver aloft, two men lunged from the shadows of the smoke-filled Kansas City dance hall.  Both men wore pink tuxedos with white carnations in the lapels--the trademark attire of the Dreamboats, the big band for which Carver had been auditioning.

Lashing out with his legs, Carver kicked one of the men--the bald one with the black goatee--in the chest, knocking him down.  The other man, however, landed a two-fisted blow in Carver's stomach.

Before the second man could hit him again, Carver pumped a knee into his side.  As the man cried out and spun away, Carver swung both legs back hard, cracking his Oxfords into the shins of whoever was holding him.

The strong hands gripping his upper arms let go, and Carver dropped to the floor.  Pivoting, he saw a man with shaggy blond hair and the brawn of a gorilla.

Before the gorilla-like goon could recover, Carver--trained in hand-to-hand combat by Sister Mayhem herself--belted him square in the jaw.  As the gorilla-man went down, Carver whirled, expecting an attack from another direction. Instead, he heard someone clapping beyond the spotlit stage.

Carver shaded his eyes from the spotlight with one caramel-brown hand.  Squinting at the shadowy tables, he saw that one woman was doing the clapping...and he recognized her.  As she rose from her seat, the folds of her red satin dress draped over her voluptuous body, highlighting every curve.  Her long red hair seemed to catch fire when she glided into the blazing spotlight.

Her name was Sheila Venus, and she was the leader of the Dreamboats.  She was the one Carver had been playing piano for when the three men had attacked him.

Congratulations, she said in a throaty, sultry voice.  You passed the audition.

Carver looked around at the three men scattered on the dirty dance hall floor.  That was part of the audition? I don't want another piano player who gets himself killed, said Sheila.

Carver nodded.  He knew all about the piano player who had gotten himself killed.  That man was the whole reason Carver was here, undercover,