| Title | : | Steel Heart: 10 Tales of Crime and Suspense |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | - |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | ebook |
| Number of Pages | : | 88 |
| Publication | : | First published July 13, 2013 |
Gumbo Weather - A mob enforcer confronts his own past as he spars with a ruthless crime boss to rescue a child from a hellish home.
A Glutton for Punishment - Terry is an MMA fighter who's never backed down from a fight, but this one might be his last.
Legacy of Brutality - Denny the Dent ain't smart, but he listens good. When a woman at his gym tangles with her abusive boyfriend, it's 300 musclebound pounds of street justice to the rescue.
The Forest for the Trees - A street racer finds the love of his life as he escapes from the cops. But how long will he live to love her?
Six Feet Under God - A wise-cracking existential P.I. takes on the ultimate murder case: Who killed the Almighty?
Tiger Mother - in 1950s Harlem, Caldonia Peele hunts down her missing son. It's the toughs who better be afraid when tiger mother's on the prowl.
Freedom Bird - Vietnam Vet Harve Chundak battles to teach his unruly son to walk the straight and narrow, but will he lose the war?
Black-Eyed Susan - A bad joke comes to all-too-real life for the denizens of a mill town gin mill.
The Last Sacrament - The dangerous life of an unlikely altar boy.
Kamikaze Death Burgers at the Ghost Town Cafe - Jay Desmarteaux is just trying to get by, running contraband in his voodoo Cadillac. When he tangles with a psycho trucker and the red hot lawyer for a violent biker gang, he fights a battle worthy of the Road Warrior in the Utah desert for his very soul.
Steel Heart: 10 Tales of Crime and Suspense Reviews
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Good short story writing is a real art form and Thomas Pluck might easily be considered to be the Michelangelo of Flash Fiction.
His palette is perfectly maintained, containing all the colours, shades and tones anyone could wish to see. He has thick brushes for the broad strokes to give the arc of a tale. There are brushes with single hairs for the fine detail. There’s a blade for when the action needs to be laid on thick and fast.
Throw in the skills to create a real sense of perspective, the odd trompe l’oeil and a dash of the abstract and you’re looking at something really tremendous.
Here are some tales of revenge. And how sweet they taste.
Pluck serves them up cold, just as he promises in the title.
Strange then, that as in all the best tales, it’s not the chill that remains once the last full-stops have been read. Rather, for me, it’s the warmth that emanates from the stories.
The characters are richly drawn and the settings as diverse as can be imagined. By the end of each story, not only will you have been on a journey through a pivotal moment in someone’s life, you’ll also have a sense of why they ended up the way they did. Why they had to behave the way they did. That they have hot red blood in their veins, however it may be spilled.
As for a Steel Heart, this guy never misses a beat. Truth is the steel’s all for show. If, like me, you’re a lover of the short story, I can guarantee that this guy Pluck is going to be stealing your ticker as soon as you set eyes on his work. -
Pluck's stories have a great versatility to them, and while there is a theme of child abuse (10% of the proceeds of this anthology go to PROTECT, the National Association to Protect Children) it's not ten stories about child abuse.
What I like about the collection is Pluck's ability to set up the tone and add the sublime touches that make the story stand out a little bit extra from just the plot, setting and characters. A great sense of pace and good twists. Also, Pluck's not afraid to let a story float, not just tie everything up in a nice bow. It makes the stories last longer in your head.
A few that stuck out for me: A collector makes good in Gumbo Weather, and this one made you think for a second after. A Glutton for Punishment, an MMA tale that was both sad and poignant. Six Feet Under God is a really funny romp through a dead God. I loved the character of Harlem mother Caldonia Peele in Tiger Mother. Vietnam vet Harve was an unlikely role model in Freedom Bird. There was a great twist on The Last Sacrament, and I don't even know how to describe Kamikaze Death Burgers at the Ghost Town Cafe. You'll just have to read it and tell me what you think. -
This is classy tough-guy fiction. Nine out of ten pieces in this collection really connected for me. The tenth (I'll avoid the spoiler) was funny and well-written, but for whatever reason I just didn't get it. Others may feel differently.
Thomas Pluck is a very direct and forceful writer. I appreciate his craft. These stories are generally rather short, and quite effective at that length. However, I found the last and longest one -- Kamikaze Death Burgers at the Ghost Town Café -- to be the centerpiece and show-stopper. The action was as eye-popping as "The Road Warrior" movie even though it's in written form. Plus, it had two nicely etched lead characters. I'd be very happy to read another Jay Desmarteaux yarn. -
An entertaining and very readable collection of two fisted tales. A couple of them felt like they might benefit from being stretched out a little, but Pluck is a strong writer who creates wonderfully real characters and there wasn't a story in the collection that I didn't enjoy.
