There's Something About Her: When Trouble Finds You Collection, #4

By Jinx James

Jack Hanson  is a hard-bitten journalist, not that he's seen much action in the sleepy Canadian township of Carstairs. His life and his career are going nowhere until the day everything changes.

As a favour, he finds himself escorting pre-teen Aimie to a local political function to meet a senior politician. What happens that evening will haunt Jack for the rest of his life. 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jinx James Books, Kit James Publishing
• Release date: Apr 29, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645632354

Jinx James

Crime fiction author Jinx James was born in the UK, and lives in Australia. He has worked in music, advertising, and TV comedy. He has always been fascinated by charisma, satire, and what makes people laugh. That’s his usual way of looking at the world, but he is also intrigued by how his characters react when confronted by a terrifying dilemma, or a moment of confrontation. As he always says, it’s the characters that write the stories. They insist that their voices are heard. Today Jinx lives in a wine-growing area in regional Australia with his wife and two dogs. As Kit James, he also writes a humorous dog book series, Mutt to Megastar, starring Elliott, a wisecracking dog.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Driving to a shitty assignment in the boondocks with a ten-year-old kid decked out in her party dress alongside him was not Jack’s idea of fun. Not by any stretch of the imagination. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel in annoyance. Not only had he agreed to bring her along, but he was plagued by the dull aching pain in his ass that had been nagging away at him for the last ten minutes.

Those turkeys at the paper hadn’t even had the decency to book him in at the Lenore Lakeside, where the function was being held. Instead, he’d had to settle for a crappy room at the Rapids Motel in Indian Narrows, some ten miles away. And that was how he came to get stuck with his diminutive passenger.

He shot a dagger glance at her in the mirror, chiding himself for his intolerance. At the same time, he felt guilty. After all, she was just a kid; it was hardly her fault, was it?

The young girl sat there next to him in a blue and white checked party dress. Her small, jolly face was set off by a pageboy hairstyle, complete with a royal-blue chocolate-box bow. She had two quite large front teeth, almost buck teeth. These had the effect of making her look much older. He realised she looked almost adult, in some bizarre nineteen-forties black-and-white movie kind of fashion.

Earlier back in Carstairs, Bonnie, his boss at the Tribune, had laid down the law. She’d explained in that affected astringent way she had that Jack had drawn the short straw. He’d be covering the Leader of the Opposition’s visit to their cornball neck of the province.

Lucky him.

Before Jack had even begun to argue and claim seniority over Irma, the cub reporter, Bonnie had raised her palms, stifling the onset of any possible dissent. Her decision was final, he’d been informed. She needed somebody with a bit of experience to handle it.

End of conversation!

He sat in the car, growling silently in a sea of sour grapes. She probably just wanted to get