The Big Cinch, a supernatural noir adventure by Kathy L. Brown, is available now. Order today. Sean Joye, a fae-touched young veteran of 1922’s Irish Civil War, aims to atone for his assassin past and make a clean, new life in America. Until he asks the wrong questions. . .
Click here to ORDER The Big Cinch
The Big Cinch is a Dashiell-Hammett-style supernatural noir mystery novel featuring wizards and Mississippian mythology. A self-contained story, its events occur after those of my other Sean Joye Investigations: The Resurrectionist and Water of Life. These three books can be read in any order without confusion. Last week we sampled the opening scene, in which Sean encounters a challenge. But no detective worth their salt works on only one case at a time. In the excerpt below, Sean encountered an old lady with a big problem.
The Big Cinch, Chapter One: Another Assignment
As I pondered the ways of the well-heeled, I couldn’t help but notice the charwoman hadn’t polished a knob since we stepped out of the building and, in fact, was staring at me. “Mrs. MacSweeney is it? I’m Sean Joye. Liking the new building, are you?”
She thought a minute, then wiped her hands on her apron and reached toward me to grasp my coat lapels. “You see them, too, don’t you?”
I looked around. The Judge was still busy jawboning with the lawyers. “See who?”
She dragged me around the corner of the building to the loading dock off Chestnut, pulled a flask from her apron pocket, and offered me a swig. When I passed on that, she shrugged and took a good pull herself. “You know right well what I mean. Haunts and other vile creatures.”
A chill crept up my spine that had nothing to do with the cold and the damp. The fae are a thinned-skin lot and to talk about them directly is just asking for trouble. I’d hoped to leave them, particularly a faerie named Éire, behind me with the life in Ireland I’d abandoned. But suspected Éire had followed me to St. Louis. And I’d found America has its own sort of faerie spirits who might not take kindly to Mrs. Mac’s insults.
“Sure you’re not meaning the Good People, now?”
The fae hail from a place called Faerie, the source of magic in our world. I’m told it looks a lot like Ireland. My granny McGuinn taught me to call them the “Good People,” if I had to mention them at all. They might appear fair as a spring morning or even wear the face of a long-dead loved one, but I still had the good sense to avoid them and their business as best I could. “I should bring the car around for the Judge.”
“I’m a good Christian woman, and I don’t want no traffic with the Devil.” Mrs. Mac grabbed my hand. “You’re one of them charmers. Tell ‘em to move along.”
She didn’t mean she liked my nice manners and dimpled smile. I hadn’t heard the term, “charmer,” since I was a child at my grandparents’ farm near Carrickfergus, and then only whispered behind Granny’s back. Sometimes people said cunning folk, faerie doctor, or wise woman. Neighbors sought her out for spells, healings, and hexes in their attempts to use every means at hand to impose their will on the world around them. For that’s all magic is, after all. “I’m nothing of the kind. I’ve got to be working and you should too.” I started to walk away. “Lay off the poteen and the haunts will lay off of you.”
“Don’t get bold with me, boy. Why do you think I drink it? It’s the only way I get any peace.”
Still not my problem. “I really have to go now.”
“I’m not done with you. I know you can help me.”
I escaped just in time to see the Judge’s friends take off toward City Hall. He looked around, expecting to see his new Packard Straight-Eight. And to be seen in it, by as many people as possible. “Sorry, I’m not your man on this one,” I called back to her. “Best find a priest.”
Mrs. Mac spit on the sidewalk and huffed back into the Civil Courts Building.
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If you enjoyed reading this excerpt from my new novel, you might like to also read the pitch for the book.
Click here to ORDER The Big Cinch
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St. Louis Writers Guild published Love Letters to St. Louis last winter. This adorable letter-shaped volume of short stories, poems, essays, and illustrations included my first science fiction story, “Welcome to Earthport Prime: A Self-Guided Tour.” A perfect gift and profits benefit the guild’s young writers’ program.
Substantial portions of this blog were first posted on The Storytelling Blog on December 23, 2021.