by Daniel Stallings
“An Agatha Christie cast of characters seen with a modern eye, and with startling moments of both insight and compassion.” —Anne Perry
The traditional murder mystery collides with an entirely different kind of detective hero in the new mystery novel Sunny Side Up. An engaging mixture of Agatha Christie–style intrigue and Millennial snark, Sunny Side Up takes a fresh approach to the traditional murder mystery with a modern sensibility and a working class amateur sleuth.
For 20-year-old Liam “Li” Johnson, a job as a cruise ship waiter was supposed to be a way to get over his father’s death and earn enough money to go back to college. Instead, Li is struggling to maintain his sanity while coping with the demands of a sadistic maître d’ and a boatload of entitled rich jerk passengers.
Li just wants to keep his head down and survive his job from hell, but when he finds a passenger sunburned to a crisp on the Sunbathing Deck, something about the scene just doesn’t add up. Li starts asking uncomfortable questions … and gets some forceful pushback, including a whispering campaign suggesting that Li himself may have had something to do with the victim’s death.
Before he knows it, Li is on the track of a murder … and if Li doesn’t find the real killer soon, or he might just get framed for the crime — or worse, lose his crappy job.
A brand-new classic in the amateur detective genre, Sunny Side Up is a traditional murder mystery for the 21st century, with a glamorous setting, a gallery of suspects, clues that will keep readers guessing to the last page, and a delightful new hero in Li Johnson, the millennial minimum wage manhunter, who brings sleuthing to the service economy.
Audience: Lovers of traditional murder mysteries.
About the Author: Daniel Stallings’ love of Golden Age detective fiction inspired him to bring the style of the classic murder mystery to modern audiences. In addition to writing mysteries, Stallings works in theater as a producer, director, and actor. He currently serves as President of the Eastern Sierra Branch of the California Writers Club. Stallings lives in the city of Ridgecrest in California’s Mojave Desert.
AVAILABLE NOW!
$12.95 US • Trade Paperback • 6″ × 9″ • 206 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-311-3
by Daniel Stallings
Publication Date: October 1, 2019
Attention, shoppers! Today’s special is murder!
The Minimum Wage Manhunter returns, bagging groceries — and a killer —in the delightful new mystery novel Cleanup on Aisle Six.
Liam “Li” Johnson is a different kind of amateur sleuth, who brings a fresh, young, working-class sensibility to the traditional murder mystery. Li solves the intricate murders that the cops can’t, but he’s not a refined English gentleman of the interwar period — he’s a modern California twentysomething struggling to get by in the service economy.
After solving a murder at his last low-paying job as a cruise ship waiter (in the first Li Johnson mystery, Sunny Side Up), Li is fresh out of options. Unemployed, flat broke and fighting to stay in community college, Li is desperate to find a job, any job.
Li catches a lucky break when kindly supermarket clerk Reuben Rodriguez gets him work at Esther’s Family Grocery. Li thinks he’s finally getting a chance to live a normal life and never see a corpse again. But then Li’s floor duster bumps into the body of the local newspaper’s famously vindictive restaurant critic, bludgeoned to death in the spice aisle … and the evidence suggests that Li’s new friend and benefactor might be the murderer.
Determined to clear Reuben’s name, Li sets out to find what really happened to the shopper in aisle six. But if Reuben didn’t kill the food critic, who did? The many restaurant owners the critic maligned? The critic’s psychologically abused son? The newspaper editor harassed by his most cantankerous employee? Why does the city’s shadowy political boss, the perky and commanding “Mrs. Mayor,” try to warn Li off his investigation? Li tries to answer these questions while dodging the attention of a homicide detective who hates amateur sleuths.
Can a lowly grocery clerk uncover a secret that powerful people want hidden? Once again, Li Johnson delivers fresh value and everyday high quality to the traditional mystery.
Audience: Lovers of traditional murder mysteries.
About the Author: Daniel Stallings’ love of Golden Age detective fiction inspired him to bring the style of the classic murder mystery to modern audiences. His previous novel was the first Li Johnson mystery, Sunny Side Up. In addition to writing, Stallings works in theater as a producer, director, and actor. He currently serves as President of the Eastern Sierra Branch of the California Writers Club. Stallings lives in Ridgecrest, California.
$12.95 US • Trade Paperback • 5¼” x 8″ • 200 pages
ISBN 978-1-61035-343-4
Updating…