Martin Ross

“Pulling Strings: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #236

Chemical warfare in the Asian jungles. Man on the Moon. Data accumulating by the terabyte in a mainframe world; satellites taking up ever-more stratospheric real estate, prepped one day to ruin the neighborhood one strike, one leak, one tech sociopath at a time.     “Oh my God,” I proclaimed, awestruck in the presence of a genuine ‘60s technological marvel. “Looka this.” A millennimom skirted away toward the chick-lit-heavy book box at the lip of the casita’s two-car garage. Sarah reluctantly abandoned the sheet-metal law...

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“Weekday at Bernie's: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

YOU CAN’T RUN.“The thing is,” I said, examining the note on the patio table.Yu looked up from Bernie, as if the world’s largest, longest-lived mosquito had lighted upon his regulation shaved cop’s head. “What?” he breathed across three syllables.I wish Jesus had been with him. That’s not a plea for the Gilbert detective’s eternal soul. His partner viewed me as a curiosity, Yu as a curse – a sort of reverse-spin, gender-flipped Jessica Fletcher who brought Midwest provinciality, Cubs fever, and murder with him every winter. Without thanking m...

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“Time A-Flyin’: An AI Chatt Novel by Anita Brake, AKA J.D. Robbed” by Martin Ross

Chapter 13“Would you like a little extra time?” Finney Turtledove posed.That took some nerve. Cojones, I mean. My continued transition from cozy New England cupcake artisan to hardboiled, hard-lovin’ paranormal investigator had been tough, and I was taking a night course in anatomical slang at the Atlanta Learning Annex that had just moved into the restroom wing of the former Atlanta Bus Station next to the new public library that had replaced the vending machines.I stared at my former client through a thick gray cloud. I’d told Fin to quit ...

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“Dragons and Roses and Bridges and Atoms: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #234

January 1/Pasadena“The great illusion…”The problem with being the scientist’s granddaughter. Out close to $2,000 to bring in 2024 with aged beef and not-so-well-aged strangers and an oldies DJ somewhere in age between the prime rib and the Boomer-Plussers in a Claremont Double Tree conference room with a cash bar and a 9 p.m. Times Square ball drop so we could pull it together at 5 a.m. for the Pasadena bus.Not that I minded. It was probably Grandma’s last New Year, and she cashed in her Make-a-Wish on a parade. Grandma had never had much us...

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“Flesh A-Flappin’: An A.I. Chatt Paranormal Mystery With Bonus Passion as Anita Brake AKA J.D. Robbed” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #232

Note: This is a companion to Ilaanni Nanoq Pivat.“My wife was murdered,” Arrell Stein insisted.“Yeah, I get it,” Alexis drawled, struggling to keep the edge from her voice. “I’m sorry, but could you please put that down? You’ll rub the fur off.”And likely find your rotting, crae-crae walking dead spouse waiting on your doorstep, she added silently.Stein started, and sheepishly returned the Monkey’s Paw to the wormwood desk. A.I. cursed the Maine horror writer who’d gifted the thing, the paranormal investigator suspected as a curse itself. De...

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“Ilaanni Nanoq Pivat” by Martin Ross

“What is man, when you come to think upon him, but a minutely set, ingenious machine for turning with infinite artfulness the red wine of Shiraz into urine?”Isak DinesenIsak reluctantly tugged his Heckler & Koch USP free of its holster. The leather creaked in protest, as if a vital appendage had been abruptly ripped away, at least in Isak’s fertile imagination. Such was how seldom Qaanaaq’s chief law enforcement officer had given the semi-automatic pistol even a thought.Liquor was a most amenable and accommodating companion here in the n...

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“Eat, Prey, Bike: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

All dogs go to Heaven. All humanity comes to dust. And it seems all Sarah’s retired high school/work buddies wind up within 30 miles of Casa Dodge Arizona. It’s like we never left Illinois. Sports and politics and playfully racist and Luddite nostalgia with similarly idled husbands who’d much rather be getting tastefully wasted on the Back Nine, auto-eroticized at a classic cars orgy, or not so tastefully blitzed at Sloan Park on Rio Salada. But once in a blessed while, Cyndi Lauper holds sway, and the “girls” decide to have low-carb fun, le...

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“Halfway to Hell: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

January 2024The RoadWe were in the home stretch, the third day toward Gilbert and a winter of not Illinois. I had my own silent version of car bingo: As we’d passed The Arch onto 44 down past Rolla and Tulsa and Amarillo, the roadside raccoons became possums became deer and armadillos and furry things that might have taken us out first had we not blasted an interstate system through the bluffs and hills and cliffs and buttes from sea to shining sea.“What was that?” Sarah gasped as I scored another lupine/sasquatch and we buzzed the umpteenth...

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“The Night Before” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #229

Disclaimer: This story does not reflect my spiritual or cultural views. It attempts merely to examine the pull of faith when Man gets involved. “Merry Christmas,” John grunted. The doctor looked up from the man’s chart, and did a half-turn back into the room. “Excuse me?” John analyzed the man’s dark face for signs of offense, belligerence. He didn’t know the physician – or for that matter, at this moment, anyone in the conceivable world -- but he realized now his sarcasm was misdirected. “I’m, ah, I’m sorry,” John offered, waving the p...

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“Thyme Again” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #228

This time, Max tried some bay leaves and more thyme. Even had he known to remove the former at the final stage, he knew it was yet another fail. He rose dejectedly from his knees before the pale jade Crane Mauretania that had at the beginning of his convulsions been a jet-black Kohler Highline Elongated Comfort Height Two-Piece, and started down the narrow staircase. It was the first time he’d left something behind, and Max wondered vaguely about the consequences of puking across the temporal rift. Grandma’d introduced him to Ray Bradbury an...

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“Fudge Factor: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Jan. 1, 2024“Were the brownies off limits or something?”Under the circumstances, it was pretty tasteless. I’m not inclined toward any of the forensically accepted methods of measuring the relative temp of a dead person, so I instead embrace a “before the body’s even in the ground” kinda code.In point of fact, I had no idea how far below 98.6 Forrest had dipped. But I did know it was somewhere around minus-10 bloody F outside, with black ice on the steep, winding drive to County 650 North to the state road to and on and all the way south on I...

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“Xocōlātl” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #227

Pender’s face crumpled almost as the cocoa hit his palate. A heavy “WTF?” almost escaped his lips – along with a slug of thick, acrid sludge – but he caught the self-satisfied grin pushing through Valindez’ dense beard and swallowed defiantly.“Is this some kind of childish prank?” he demanded quietly, depositing the insulated tumbler on the camp table between them with as much dignity as he could muster.Valindez arched his brows in mock innocence. “Indeed not. You had mentioned two weeks ago that a cup of hot chocolate was what you desired a...

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“Souls-A-Swappin’: An Alexis Chatt Novel of Paranormal Romance as by Anita Brake, AKA J.D. Robbed, AKA Martin Ross” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #226

Disclaimer: A sequel to “Hearts A-Pfishing: A Romance as by J.D. Robbed”Chapter 12Atlanta, GeorgiaAlexis adoringly poured Dvlknsh another cup of hemoglobin-infused Mozambique AA, stroking the spot where the Latvian mob had ripped a patch of hair and scalp from the Syburslovenian hacker to create a clone capable of doubling Dvlknsh’ plagiarized output.The genetic doppelganger turned out to be encoded with probing psychological insight, and when it killed off half the male population of Cherry Stream (the Virgin River clone that regularly topp...

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“Pilgrim's Egress: A Mike Dodge Holiday Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #226

“Yeah, I don’t mind that so much,” Cousin Greg replied in an octave that suggested the contrary. “It’s when they have to shove it in your face all the time.”I nudged my chair gently back, an inch or two to allow graceful egress. Load-bearing plastic against composite garage flooring does not permit such a thing, especially at Thanksgiving, and Sarah glanced toward my end of the table. Rainbow Greg was in full dudgeon, and he gave me merely a flickering side-eye as I rose. Brother-in-law Jake soon would rally as well against rampant face-shov...

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“Seen: A Mike Dodge Mystery” by Martin Ross

Submitted to Contest #225

After my dad passed, I attended my first and only art auction. In my little sister’s living room. Nine pieces in all, staged on the couch, the maple hearth over the faux-birch faux-fireplace, the guest chairs, Grandma Kendricks’ old rolltop desk.It was a round-robin process, the spoils divided evenly between the three Dodge siblings. I came away with a landscape of hazy western hills and narrow pines, a study of the Alamo, and a still of two lemons and a teapot. Oil on sturdy eighth-inch boarding of the type used to ship provisions in and pr...

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