Sparkle Shot

by Lina Chern

Shy scientist Mara is sick of Karma blowing off their breakfast dates, although today her stripper roommate has a good excuse: she's just witnessed a murder, and the next body to turn up dead could be hers.

Mara sets off on a rescue mission that turns up a perfume-selling wannabe cowboy, a handsome, enigmatic cop, and the search for the perfect breakfast cocktail.

“Everything you could want in a crime thriller: guys with guns, girls with guns, girls with brains, the perfect breakfast cocktail and just enough marine biology to keep things interesting.”

95 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Lina Chern is the author of Play the Fool, winner of the 2024 Mary Higgins Clark Award and nominee for the 2024 Lefty and Anthony Awards. A sequel, Tricks of Fortune, is forthcoming in 2025. Other work has appeared in The Marlboro Review, The Bellingham Review, Rhino, The Collagist, and Black Fox Literary Magazine. Lina has also written trivia questions, word puzzles for a TV game show, paranormal romances, dialogue for your favorite comic book characters, award-winning movie reviews, and poems that have been published and read by up to dozens of people.

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's quite a feat that Lina Chern was able to pack this short crime thriller with so much action and a full cast of interesting, well-rounded characters. I picked the book up and didn't put it down until I was done. I definitely want to read more about this motley crew and I'm looking forward to a follow-up!

[David Nemeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Waiting at a diner for a friend to join you for breakfast is a common enough experience for many of us. But when your friend is just getting off of work from the strip club across the street, yeah, that's a bit different.

Lina Chern's Sparkle Shot (Fahrenheit Press) is a great slice of life crime fiction that tells the story of Karma, the stripper, and Mara, her post-graduate friend, as they try to get a hold of a confusing situation involving a hooker, an aging strip club owner, an Eastern European pimp dreaming of being an Old West gunslinger, and an attractive drug dealer who hangs out by the back door at the strip club. Seriously, what other reasons do you need to read this book?

Chern has a knack for writing some wonderful dialogue between characters giving the novel a dose of reality. Her use of flashbacks during the few hours of the story is always well done.

The first girl Rusty sold was to a tubby VP of Business Development who reeked of BO and pretended to confuse the US state of Georgia with Alavidze’s homeland. He milked the joke all night and Rusty laughed every single time. He charged the man three times the going rate, telling him he could settle for some snaggle-toothed slut, or he could have a sweet young virgin, fresh as a Caucasus mountain flower. He told the man to wait in his hotel room while Rusty went home, woke his sister Nadya, told her to put on the black dress Aunt Zina had sewn for her for New Year’s Day, and come to a job interview.

I am looking forward to reading more from Chern as well as from the publisher Fahrenheit Press.

[Verity W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly Fahrenheit keep spotting great quirky stories from new writers. This is a short book, but it's a great one. It's got murders and a strip bar and guns and mafia wannabes and it's really good fun. Fast-paced and page-turning it's over before you realise it - leaving you wanting more.

My Fahrenheit book club subscription has been such a good buy - and I've already renewed it for next year for more of the same!

[Jeremy Hornik · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dirty little quickie about a good girl, a bad girl, a cop, and a couple of hard guys. Scenes are well staged, characters are sharp, and dialogues is snappy. A fast read, and fun.