Thrilling Mystery Tales 2: Thrilling Mystery Tales, #2

By John Pirillo

Death.

Crazy men.

Mad men.

Dark magic.

Crimes of the heart.

Crimes of the soul.

 

All things that our detectives face every day in their professions.

 

From Sherlock Holmes to Detective Judge Dee, here is a fun collection of thrilling mysteries that explore the depths of horror, crime and madness we've come to expect when magic and mayhem walk hand in hand.

 

And do they ever!

 

A genius house mind is like a computer.

 

A detective who forgets nothing.

 

An oriental detective who balances justice with mercy.

 

Five huge books that will keep the pages turning for your imagination for many hours.

 

Experience worlds you've never traveled to.

 

Go to places you wish you could.

 

Run from horrors and villains that show no mercy.

But whatever you do, don't unlock your front door to answer the door bell.

Don't open your French Windows to see what made that noise.

And don't…don't…you ever go down into the basement without a damned good light!

 

Below are the books in this new and exciting collection:

 

BLACK AND WHITE

 

Far from it.

 

This detective has only one option…death.

His death!

 

Detective Judge Dee Circle of Death

 

A tea party.

Old time friends.

One is poisoned.

But no one saw poison given.

How did that one die?

 

Detective Judge Dee faces a plot of murder unlike any other.

 

Benoit's Formula

 

With one thought he can summon a monster that can shred your heart in your chest.

 

Steampunk Holmes Bleak Perception

 

Madness.

Black Magic.

 

Steampunk Holmes, a duplicate Sherlock Holmes, from an alternate Victorian London, shunned by those he loves because of his outlandish behavior, won't stop until he finds an answer to the madness that has been perpetrated.

 

Sherlock Holmes Murder by Death

 

Fiend.

Warlock.

Killer.

Assassin.

 

A man who thrives on attention and hatred.

Violence and vegeance!

 

Can even Sherlock Holmes with the help of the Invisible Man and his good companion Doctor John Watson stop this fiend from the past?

 

These exciting Urban Fantasy mysteries will take you places you've never been!

• Language: English
• Publisher: John Pirillo
• Release date: Aug 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223016762

John Pirillo

The author was born in Washington, Pennsylvannia. He loves animals and birds. Has two pet cockatiels that keep him company while he writes. He has a lovely daughter and a rascally grandson. He is rich in friends that matter and well adjusted to a life of challenges. He writes and draws every day. He loves anything science fiction, fantasy or extremely well written. Same goes for movies and TV. Not married currently, but has an eye and ear open to possibilities. :)

Book preview

Prologue

W ho are you? I pleaded . Why have you done this to me? I begged.

Water streamed like liquid poison upon my back as I lay there, chained to a masonry floor with rough edges tearing into my naked flesh. Between the constant pounding of the water on my back and the pressure of the stone tearing into my flesh from the weight of the water pouring down on me, I felt like a piece of meat being hammered to perfection.

But in this case, my perfection also meant my death.

It was a struggle to breathe.

Remember, I told myself.

For God’s sake, remember!

A man stood over me in the darkness. I couldn’t see him. I felt him. His malevolent presence permeated the air and penetrated every pore of my body.

How is that possible from any living human being?

Who said he was alive?

Who are you? I raged.

He chuckled. You do not know? Surely the great detective; the hero of London newspapers; the man who always gets his man; a man that criminals run from and wizards fear. Surely, he would know. But does he? No, he lays sullied and stinking, just like his career. His brilliant career that amounts to nothing in the grander scheme of things.

He laughed harder, and then put his face close to mine, but where I couldn’t see him.

Here you are now. Stuck to the bottom of a sewer tunnel beneath the streets of London. Trapped like a pig stuck on a skewer. How brilliant does your career look now? How famous are you now?

I don’t care about fame and fortune, I blurted out, spitting water that had gotten into my mouth again as well.

I choked several long moments, and then trying to get a better view, cocked my head at a painful angle.

And I am not trapped. Merely inconvenienced, I told him, thought the way my body felt, I wasn’t so sure he wasn’t right at that moment.

I would have protested more when more water threatened to flood into it.

You have convinced yourself, but you have not convinced me, little man, he hissed at me.

He kicked me in the side.

Searing pain shot through my insides. Surely a rib or more were now broken.

But I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of crying out.

He kicked me in the head.

Stars flung themselves gloriously above a majestic British flag that flew over Buckingham Palace, the symbol of a flying dirigible with steam driven propellers upon its red, white, and blue.

Water surged into my nostrils.

I was hurtled from the blissful release of unconsciousness as I choked on it, and then spat it out, coughing hard, over, and over.

What do you want from me? I asked.

Nothing.

I can help you, I pleaded.

You can’t even help yourself, he replied then kicked me the head again.

But this time I didn’t black out, instead I felt like throwing up.

As I hovered between light and dark his hands clutched my hair and tugged my head back hard. He looked into my face, but I saw nothing but his eyes.

And such eyes they were.

Empty of warmth. Of feeling. Of anything a good man would want to be found in his heart.

Black and White, he told me and then left me to the incoming water.

After he had kicked me in the head side again.

I recoiled in pain, but I still heard him repeated those damnable words over and over as he sloshed off, seeking the ladder that would bring him to the surface streets once more.

The same ones that had brought me down into this horrid pit of stench and death.

Black and White. Black and White! Black and White! He chanted. Over and over and over.

A huge dead something that should never have existed in our world floated past, its many heads limp with death, its fangs slung out, like sharp swords.

Dear God! I uttered as the horrid thing that had floated past, I found not to be dead, but instead had feigned lifelessness to fool me, to get me off guard.

It reached across my lower right leg and began climbing up onto my back, seeking the back of my neck.

It was my worst nightmare comes true.

Another huge surge of water poured on my back but did not wash the monstrosity away. It continued to slink closer and closer.

I could feel its drool, even through the water, as it closed in on my neck, its many jaws opening up for the kill.

My name is Jonathan Skies.

And I’m a dead man.

Ahead

Y ard ahead, Henry Waters cried out as he steered our steam driven buggy along a narrow dirt road, both of us crying out to God for mercy from the horrendous bumps and scrapes our buggy was taking.

Victorian England might be modern, but comfortable everywhere. Not so much.

Man is not meant to endure such constant annoyances, but in this modern age of science and reason, one must also learn how to have patience with the machinations of time upon man’s common sense. And if one didn’t learn so from the easier lessons in life, then there were plenty or harder ones to help.

Why can’t man make something less noisy, less strenuous, something that could fly, and or hover above the rough shod roads that line the avenues of London and the narrow, but constant roads leading forth from it into the countryside?

But it hadn’t and we haven’t.

Though one modern thinker, Sir Isaac Asimov, working with a pair of brilliant writers, Ian Cummings, and Ford Heinlein, had come up with the idea of a propeller driven craft that would drive upon shafts of air from four sets of propellers mounted on either side of a buggy.

Fat chance of that ever working.

I can’t imagine a day going by when someone wouldn’t be sliced and diced by such an insane machine but leave it up to some fool entrepreneur to come up with one to foil all my doubts and make it work.

And lo and behold. We would have one louder and noisier machine, expelling hot steam into the faces of pedestrians and poor horses drawing simple carriages.

I sighed as the next deep rut in the long, long dirt road was struck. I flew upwards then landed hard; the air knocked from my lungs for a brief moment.

Waters looked over at me and grinned.

Had he hit that one on purpose?

He shook his head.

No, of course not. He was my friend. We don’t pull jokes like that on each other.

Most of the time.

I gave him another suspicious look, and then our buggy hit three ruts in a row.

I sighed after I regained my balance.

So here we are, modern man, we curse, we spit, and we snarl against our fates, and more importantly we bring very thick cushions to sit upon, to at least diminish the jolting of the bumps on our bottoms, if not our backs and sides.

For all the good they do!

Pulling over! I asked Henry Waters, my friend and companion in solving crime. Or more often than not, Waters.

Jolly ho! He cried out as the buggy came to a coughing, spitting stop, huge puffs of steam streaming from the side pipes near the fan in back.

The huge propellers began to dim in their noise level, and then slow to a stop.

Safe to get out now.

I hopped out and staggered a moment.

Have to get my sea legs back, I thought.

There, Waters pointed to a tall tower behind the last of the trees we had parked beneath.

Our huge propellored engine made one last valiant attempt to restart itself, and then in a fast explosion of steam and heat it stopped entirely.

Rule of thumb: Once you climb from your steam driven buggy, never go behind it or near its propellers. Might end up diced and sliced for a nice salad.

All of us are grateful for the aid of the modern

steam and propeller engines, but that doesn’t have to mean we will ever appreciate or enjoy the constant heat and noise of them.

If I sound like a whiner, I am not, sir. I am merely pointing out the facts. That is how I think. Facts. And, probably the biggest issue, most have with me, is my predilection for facts, which might explain why I have such a fascination for the now gone Sherlock Holmes, wherever in the pocket worlds he may be.

Maybe someday, a smart person, like that Yankee fellow, Edison, or that brilliant man from Serbia, Nikola Tesla will figure it all out.

Now that man amazes me. He is young like I, but with a mind as sharp as a diamond and as tough as well. I met him once in a Romanian case Waters and I cracked. He actually helped us solve The Case of Thousand Burdens, a rather remarkable crime that managed to pilfer thousands of pounds from each person that was enlisted in it...and willingly, whatover!

Waters climbed from the driver’s seat, put his top hat on again, otherwise it would have blown off. Another complaint about modern buggies. No rooftop. But we heard that that Yankee fellow Ford, whose first name was the same as Waters, that he was coming out with such rather soon.

Waters told me some of the richer clients of ours already had imported some. They looked like boxes, without any of the more charming aspects of a proper buggy with its rounded edges needed for proper steamed air flow.

You believe them to be there then, I asked.

I do, Waters replied.

I put a hand to my chin in contemplation.

There was no apparent way to the top of the tower, but by its framework. So, if this was indeed their hideout, or hideaway as they Yanks liked to call them, then they must be rugged and strong to climb up each and every day and down again to perform their crimes.

Or...

And that’s what ate at the back of my mind.

The or...

Meditation

M editation will refine your body and your state of mind, Sir Isaac Newton told me as I perched on the branch of the apple tree alongside my mentor.

Why?

Because just like an apple will bonk your head if you do not move from its falling gravitational plunge, so shall dull thoughts plunk your soul and dive you deep into the miasma of human failure and misunderstanding.

Huh?

Ice, as my mentor preferred to be called in private, turned his long nosed and bespectacled face upon me, who while big for my age...about four feet tall...was still overpowered by his mentor and teacher, who topped me by a good foot and a huge hundred pounds.

Not that size mattered to either of us that much, but when you’re young as I was and shorter than most his age, adults sometimes seem like giants when in fact they are quite normal in most ways.

However, that might be a hard thing to apply to Ice, as he was anything but normal. He was as wont to depict a new theory with practical items, such as the current apple, or impractical things, like a horse about to sit on one’s head.

I had been lucky so far when it came to the horse part of things, but the apple experiment was starting to ring alarm bells in my underdeveloped mind, which Ice insisted he was expanding the drawers of, so that they could contain more insight and information.

I wasn’t so sure this was the case at that moment.

Contrary to what historical literature might record on some worlds, this version of Ice, or Sir Isaac Newton, was neither fatherly or miserly or wimpy. He was a stout, sharp witted scholar with a nose in the right place of science, even though sometimes confused with the Warwick Witches Society as a Wizard, when in fact he was merely a man who liked to party with women who were free of the jellied standards of the Victorian Era.

While Queen Victoria no longer reigned officially, having turned into a frog, which no prince had yet been able to kiss back to womanhood, this so-called Victorian Age of England was predominately created by her, as she and Merlin, her mentor and friend...and some said lover...had helped her to achieve the Fifth Level of Magic and Science. A rare, but prestigious orbit, occupied by the greatest of Wizards and Minds of Science.

But not I. The only level I was presently at was the one that involved the possibility of losing my head, or more importantly, my life if I agreed to my mentor’s plan of attack to prove his latest theory: What goes up must come down.

Huh? I repeated, not wanting to appear stupid, even though I felt quite so at the moment, seemed to jar Ice back from