Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Cops and Comix
    Cops and Comix
    Cops and Comix
    Ebook55 pages50 minutes

    Cops and Comix

    By Rhys Ford

    4.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Murder and Mayhem Short

    It’s all fun and games until someone leaves a dead body on the floor.

    Life for comic book store owner Alex Martin usually runs to the mundane. Sure, he has a regular influx of geeks and freaks, but for the most part, it’s a familiar weird. That all changes when he opens up Planet X Comics one morning and finds a corpse in the middle of his shop.

    When Detective James Castillo is called in to investigate, Alex is torn between wanting to climb the man like a tree and giving him a wide berth. Luckily for Alex, the handsome detective is just as interested in him—as a suspect in the murder.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamspinner Press
    Release dateNov 16, 2018
    ISBN9781644051528
    Cops and Comix
    Author

    Rhys Ford

     Rhys Ford is an award-winning author with several long-running LGBT+ mystery, thriller, paranormal, and urban fantasy series and is a two-time LAMBDA finalist with her Murder and Mayhem novels. She is also a 2017 Gold and Silver Medal winner in the Florida Authors and Publishers President’s Book Awards for her novels Ink and Shadows and Hanging the Stars. She is published by Dreamspinner Press and DSP Publications. She shares the house with Harley, a gray tuxedo with a flower on her face, Badger, a disgruntled alley cat who isn’t sure living inside is a step up the social ladder, as well as a ginger cairn terrorist named Gus. Rhys is also enslaved to the upkeep of a 1979 Pontiac Firebird and enjoys murdering make-believe people. Rhys can be found at the following locations: Blog: www.rhysford.com Facebook: www.facebook.com/rhys.ford.author Twitter: @Rhys_Ford  

    Read more from Rhys Ford

    Related to Cops and Comix

    Titles in the series (1)

    View More
    View More

    Related ebooks

    Suspense Romance For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Oat Grass

      Jun 25, 2020

      Oat Grass
      4 min read

    • Article

      Movie Novels Are Still Around, And They Aren't All Trash — Just Ask The Chicagoans Who Wrote Them

      Apr 1, 2020

      CHICAGO - Recently, during C2E2 at McCormick Place, the Random House imprint Del Rey, which publishes Lucasfilm-licensed "Star Wars" books, made an unusual choice and offered the novelization of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" three weeks early. A

      9 min read

    • Article

      Appreciating Hate

      Sep 10, 2021

      Felix thought of his mind as though it were artwork – a painting. His skull was the frame, the canvas inside the frame was the grey matter, the applied paint was his education, and that insubstantial feeling evoked by the art piece was his consciousn

      7 min read

    • Article

      Echo

      Jan 10, 2024

      Once, during a depressive episode, Stanley cut out thirteen small paper stars and taped them to the ceiling of his cluttered bedroom. They were made from the construction paper left over from his youth, stored away in a basket on a shelf in the basem

      14 min read

    • Article

      Eating Oatmeal with Alasdair Gray

      Jan 1, 2020

      Alasdair Gray as a young man. Photo provided by the author in 2016.  The Scottish writer Alasdair Gray died on December 29th, at the age of eighty-five, four years after a fall from the outside steps of his house left him with a spinal injury that co

      5 min read

    • Article

      Restless Souls

      Mar 6, 2018

      Restless Souls
      8 min read

    • Article

      The Escape Of Koravitch

      Sep 30, 2019

      The Escape Of Koravitch
      16 min read

    • Article

      Life After Death

      May 27, 2022

      Life After Death
      14 min read

    • Article

      Andrew Caldecott

      Jul 17, 2019

      Andrew Caldecott
      3 min read

    • Article

      Trapped in Purgatory with Stephen Dedalus and Anse Bundren

      Aug 15, 2017

      Get over yourself, Anse—and quit jabbering about your new teeth. The post Trapped in Purgatory with Stephen Dedalus and Anse Bundren appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Duplex

      Jun 9, 2020

      I moved to Los Angeles to sing. When was this? August? June? I was twenty-nine, and those were shapeless months, when the days blended together and I refused to pull them apart. My landlord was unusually close to her adult son. His name was Jeffrey,

      21 min read

    • Article

      Hankering After Ghosts

      Dec 1, 2022

      It’s been 10 years since the publication of my book A Natural History of Ghosts (see FT296:42-45). I probably should have written more in it about the writer Charles Dickens. The truth is I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Dickens. I rea

      8 min read

    • Article

      Euthanasia

      Aug 10, 2023

      On a frigid December morning, Hank Sanders stomped the caked mud off his worn boots and entered Discount Hardware. He couldn’t shake his cousin’s remarks. Put her down, he’d said. The words had rolled so effortlessly off his lips, as if her life mean

      11 min read

    • Article

      The Wolf

      Nov 6, 2018

      The Wolf
      12 min read

    • Article

      Pushing The Boundaries

      Jul 14, 2023

      By DARREL BRISTOW-BOVEY JONATHAN BALL Writer Darrel Bristow-Bovey is a self-confessed “polar nut” and “Shacklehead”. His fascination with Ernest Shackleton began when he was a little boy and his father told him incredible tales about the Anglo-Irish

      3 min read

    • Article

      His Brilliant Career

      Mar 19, 2023

      His Brilliant Career
      9 min read

    • Article

      An Unspoken

      Mar 3, 2020

      Hal Parker runs out to his wife’s hydrangea bushes. He’s trying to scare away the neighbor’s black Lab, Major. Hal claps his hands in front of him and shouts, but Major’s already peeing on the bush. It seems to Hal that lately the dog just won’t stay

      11 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Apr 21, 2023

      Books
      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Cops and Comix

    4.5/5

    2 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Cops and Comix - Rhys Ford

      Table of Contents

      Blurb

      Dedication

      Acknowledgments

      Text

      More from Rhys Ford

      About the Author

      By Rhys Ford

      Visit Dreamspinner Press

      Copyright

      Cops and Comix

      By Rhys Ford

      A Murder and Mayhem Short

      It’s all fun and games until someone leaves a dead body on the floor.

      Life for comic book store owner Alex Martin usually runs to the mundane. Sure, he has a regular influx of geeks and freaks, but for the most part, it’s a familiar weird. That all changes when he opens up Planet X Comics one morning and finds a corpse in the middle of his shop.

      When Detective James Castillo is called in to investigate, Alex is torn between wanting to climb the man like a tree and giving him a wide berth. Luckily for Alex, the handsome detective is just as interested in him—as a suspect in the murder.

      To the Five and Elizabeth North

      For making all the death and geekery fun.

      Acknowledgments

      TO MY beloved Five—Jenn, Penn, Tamm, and Lea. My life without you all would be joyless. And easier to cook around. But still… joyless. Sour cream is good.

      To my other sisters whom I adore, Ree, Ren, Lisa and Mary.

      Thanks as always go to Dreamspinner—Elizabeth, Lynn, Grace, Liz and her team, Naomi (who is forced to suffer through my flailings), Amanda, Andrea, Sue, Paul and the rest of the Ark. Seriously, thank you.

      THERE WAS a dead body on his floor. Well, the comic book shop’s floor, but it was his shop, so technically it was his floor.

      And if Alex’s heart kept trying to squirm its way out of his rib cage as it fled in terror, there would soon be another one.

      Leaning against the steel-reinforced glass door to his comic book shop, Alex pressed his fist against his chest and willed his galloping pulse to calm down. His racing heartbeat not only ignored the scolding, it seemed to kick it up a step, until it felt like he’d injected jalapeno juice directly into his veins. Fear apparently mimicked an overdose of Mexican food—or at least that was how Alex saw it.

      Outside, Los Angeles continued on its merry way as if there weren’t a dead body lying facedown in front of Planet X’s bargain table.

      A scrubbed-out butter container with his leftover pad thai hit the floor when his already cold fingers went numb. Some part of his brain hoped the top hadn’t come off, more because the pad thai’d come out pretty well, considering it was the first time he’d cooked something that exotic. Belatedly he wondered if he should check on the man, if it was a man. From where Alex stood, he couldn’t actually tell.

      He took a step toward the too-still form on the universe-patterned industrial carpet he’d scored from a theater closing but then nearly stepped on the dropped butter container and stopped in his tracks. Normally he was through the door by nine, anticipating opening the shop at ten, but today he’d been running a bit late. Thankful for the single designated space he got from the strip mall, he’d parked his Mini up front and got out, figuring he’d just open a little bit early and do anything he needed to catch up on while he waited for customers.

      But now, with a dead body, it looked like Planet X probably wouldn’t be opening anytime soon.

      Shit, it’s a crime scene, Alex said to no one in particular. The dead body surely didn’t care. If it even was a dead body. "How long do they need to keep the store locked up for a crime scene? God, that was selfish. Shit,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1