Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

He blinked a couple of times, then said, “Give it my best shot, baby.”

He stepped back. Mickey opened the door for Luci to go through, but she stopped in her tracks like someone had shot her.

“Lila!”

Mickey had a feeling he should know that name.

“Lila!” Pryce went for his gun.

Lila. Uh oh. He grabbed Pryce’s arm. “Getting strip-searched is a bitch, sir.”

Pryce gave a low growl.

“I’d hate to have to visit you in prison, Daddy.” Luci grabbed his other arm.

He gave a big sigh. “Oh, all right. She can live.”

Lila, an older version of Luci, only with a softer jaw, stepped into the hall. “Pooh Bear? Is that you?”

As Mickey pulled Luci past her mother he looked back and saw Pryce straighten his tie, a dazed look replacing the murder in his eyes. He looked at Luci, who grinned, shrugged and said, “Where’s that tree, Ross?”

Thank you for reading Do Wah Diddy Die. I hope you enjoyed it. :-) If you’d like more Luci and Mickey adventures, keep reading!

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Do Wah Diddy Delete

When you need a little murder, a little mayhem and maybe a little romance in your life, you need Do Wah Diddy Delete. And there’s a baby. A totally safe baby. But everyone else has a lot of trouble in these three short stories.

DO WAH DIDDY DEAD

If Miss Weena can put off dying to solve Miss Gracie's murder, then Luci can't play the pregnancy card to get out of playing side-kick. It's not like it will be dangerous. Miss Gracie has been dead for decades…

DO WAH DIDDY DIE ALREADY

Luci Seymour is out of the murder business and in the mom/wife/B&B business. Until the morning she sees a body in the new freezer. But when she goes to call in her homicide detective husband, she sees the dead guy walk in the front door. Not dead. Not even chilly…

DELETING DENNIS

Capri Hinkenlooper thought her name—and Monday mornings—were the worst things in her life, but then her fellow editor and all around slimy guy gets deleted with her letter opener. On the upside, the two homicide detectives investigating the murder are seriously cute…

All three of these short stories were written for anthologies that are now out of print. Technically, of course, they are still out of print, since these are digital, but they are available once more for those who want more Mickey, Luci and her aunts. Deleting Dennis is a stand alone short, written for my daughter who was once an editor in crazy town.

Foreword

Sometime in the 1990’s, after I’d finished The Spy Who Kissed Me, my then agent told me I needed a mystery series if I wanted to catch the attention of a New York publisher. Spy, in her opinion, wasn’t suited to the series format. I agreed with her and bent my brain to the problem of creating a series character. I lived in New Orleans at the time and readers seem to like the location. After much mulling, the story of Luci and Mickey began to take shape.

Before I could even begin to think of submitting the first book, Do Wah Diddy Die, to a publisher, that agent and I had parted ways, and I’d discovered digital publishing. I’d also ventured a toe into script writing. Luci and Mickey’s story got adapted for screen, got optioned and accepted for publication all around the same time. Sadly, the Hollywood part of the adventure didn’t happen, and Desilu slammed the door on my original title (I Love Luci - When I Don’t Want to Kill Her), but the renamed Do Wah Diddy Die was published. It has changed publishers several times since then, but when L&L Dreamspell closed their doors in July, 2013, I decided to self publish.

Despite my big plans, Luci and Mickey did not become a series, but at the request of readers, I did add two installments to their adventures, Do Wah Diddy Dead and Do Wah Diddy Die Already—two of the short stories included in this mini collection. If you haven’t read the novel, Do Wah Diddy Die, be warned that there are minor spoilers.

The tale behind Deleting Dennis, the last story in this collection, began when one of my daughters got a job at a small publishing house. She shared with me some of the funny (read: crazy) happenings of a small press. That stirred my juices, and the tale of Capri Hinkenlooper and Socrates Musings began to take shape. It was also planned to be a series that got lost in other projects. Was also supposed to be a novel, but didn’t quite make it (unusual for me, because usually my books end up being too long, not too short!) and instead became a long short story. I know, it’s kind of a contradiction in terms, but it’s just that kind of story.

Deleting Dennis was originally set in New Orleans, but Katrina happened before I got it finished. When L&L Dreamspell put out a submission call for The Mystery of the Green Mist anthology, I remembered the story and pulled it out. Retooled the location because the New Orleans that I knew, the New Orleans of the story, had vanished under the waves. So, Socrates Musings—like so many in New Orleans—moved their business to Houston, Texas. It is my hope that it retained that quirky factor that makes New Orleans so fun to write