Dave's Fiction Warehouse

OK, I've plunged back into crime fiction, but I seem to have started at the shallow end of the pool: Murder in Vegas , a 2005 anthology of short stories edited by Michael Connelly. I found it at the library a few days ago and I was in a hurry. I like short stories, even though it's rare to find a really good one. The yarns here -- set, as you might imagine, in Las Vegas -- are entertaining enough but only one ("The Sunshine Tax") is close to memorable. The rest all seem a bit derivative and predictable and lean heavily on violence to resolve plot complications -- which is the sort of thing I'm perfectly capable of writing myself. I read short stories for fun, but also to gain insights about the craft, and these didn't yield many. They didn't yield many new angles on Vegas, either. We were there in December. While the city remains a glittering petri dish of vice and weakness, it has a pathetic air about it now. You walk the sleazy Strip and don't think ...

We flew back from Vegas on the Galoot Express, an Allegiant Air flight packed with guys in cowboy hats coming home from the National Finals Rodeo. All were identically arrayed in tight Wranglers and oversized snap-button shirts and belt buckles the size of turkey platters, and all swaggered onto the plane braying about their drunken exploits in affected drawls taken from movies and crappy country music. They all wore cell phones, tilted forward for a faster draw. This is the vanishing breed of rugged individualist that made this country great. Even after four days of galumphing around Vegas in painful cowboy boots, they were an ebullient, self-satisfied bunch. They had accomplished much in a short time: guzzling gallons of Bud Light and making lewd propositions to dozens of cocktail waitresses and keeping awake countless tourists unlucky enough to have a room on the same floor. As one guy on our flight yelled to his companion: "Life's too short not to have a good time." B...