Street Whispers: Stories

by Liam Sweeny

An eclectic collection of pulp, grit and noir stories inspired by the Capital Region of New York, a rust-belt crossroads in the shadow of the city that never sleeps. Here’s a trip led by fat slobs in smoky, vomit-stained cabs, heading to the oasis of the strip club on a street lined with rusted out factories, ventilated with beer cans and rocks. No heroes and villains in these pages, just shades of grey and characters making choices between bad and worse.


Tales of woe and macabre, the profane and ordinary dance with each other in a building where the forgotten stay, passing their street whispers like bottles from the bottom shelf.

ebook

Published February 23, 2018

About the author

I was born in a rotted wooden shack by the moonlight on a cold winter's night...

Okay, so I was born in a hospital in March on the nation's bicentennial year of 1976. People were partying and I was unleashing bio-terror on my parents every changing time.

Born and raised in the Capital District of New York, Albany and it's environs, I grew up with the pride of knowing that "going to the city" never meant Albany.

I didn't start writing fiction until I got back from Louisiana after Katrina. It took that to launch me from stanzas to scenes.

I've written three Sci-fi/Fantasy novels, a few collections and novellas, and I drifted to old haunts, to the most fun parts of my life - delinquency. So now I write cops and crimes.

I like making great characters, mainly because I like meeting great characters. My experience is that people will tell you anything you want to know if you're ready to listen. I'm all ears.

Reviews

[David Nemeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a deep fear I have that is a constant hum in my background, a fear that somehow I’ll fuck up all of this – crazily gestures to my world around me – and it will be gone. No home, no car, no money, and a pair of broken glasses. All gone to shit. My nightmares are the world that Liam Sweeny’s Street Whispers inhabits.

Given my fears, “Rats” is one of the obvious stories that connected with me. A homeless man’s best friend dies and this death gives the unnamed narrator a chance to remember their friendship and how it all came to be.

When you first cash out, you learn things. It’s like getting thrown out of the space station—it looks damn near safe from behind the windows, though I bet the view’s a lot prettier in space. Most people start out couch surfing until their friends and family get burned out, ’cause you don’t get on the streets by spending that time sorting your life out. No, I went from mortgage to garbage in a little over a month.

So getting back, I didn’t know how to be homeless. I just had this idea of the bum sleeping under newspapers on a park bench, so I had a dollar and a quarter, bought a Sunday paper, and carefully unfolded it, wedging it between me and the slivered wood.

This theme of failing and falling continues throughout Street Whispers: the alcoholic caught in making amends in "The Ninth Step", a man thinks about confronting the immense tragedy of his life in "The Gull Princess", the owner of a restaurant and his friend share drinks outside of the shuttered food join in "Last Night as Mesca’s", or "Drifter", a man who gets retribution for others without their knowledge.

I’m in the barn right now, and I know I’m gonna have to go on from here. The drips coming off the pickax are slowing down like seconds going toward a black hole.

He deserved it. Fucked Hank’s little girl. Baggy pants, side-spin hat, bling, and crisp white Jordans—eye candy to a ten-year-old. Hank caught ’em in her room when he went up to tuck her in.

Hank’s a good man. Men like him deserve better than what the world’s got for ’em. A tough guy can knock out a heifer, but a strong man can carry a calf with a broken leg three hundred yards to the barn to nurse it to health. That’s Hank. A strong man. I admire him. I took the Cain off his shoulders and he’ll never know.

I might be alone in this, but I tire of stories with the O-Henry-like endings because as I read them, I find myself trying to figure out what that twist is going to be in the final sentence. Except for “White Trash on the Road to Canada” and “A Gentleman’s Game”, both of which I found too cute in construction, Sweeny is able to keep my attention throughout these type stories even as I’m trying to outguess the author.

Going back to the theme of Street Whispers, Sweeny’s characters and situations talk about those that go unnoticed; these are the people whose lives get cut out from the weekly police blotter. Liam Sweeny’s Street Whispers is a solid short story collection of crimes, mishaps, and exhaustion.

[OwenMBarnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great, gritty stories that were realistic and still full of surprises. Some neat allusions to local stuff sprinkled throughout too but nothing that would alienate a reader from anywhere else.

[Lyle Boylen · Rating 5 out of 5]

An entertaining collection of crime fiction stories.