Bar Sinister: Bar Sinister

by Marian Allen

Juss -- Injustice H. Chocolate (named and raised by hippies) -- questions the usefulness of her Life Coach work and hires a secretary to prove its importance. Prim and efficient Kerry Dashingly can hardly wait to tell his wife that his latest secretary temp job is in a miniature castle in a neighborhood of Disneyesque architecture. Kerry hasn't even begun when he gets a call from his hapless cousin, A man she openly hated is dead, and the police found unspecified evidence in the back of her car. Juss immediate attaches herself to the problem, determined to help, even if it kills her. Spadena Street is a two-block Storybook Style neighborhood with a past as corporate housing for privileged employees of a now-defunct factory. Some of its mysteries are connected to that past, some are connected to the characters of the people who lived there or live there now. Some are connected only by the networks of the current residents. Some just are.

234 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 29, 2019

About the author

For as long as I can remember, I've loved telling and being told stories. When, at the age of about six, I was informed that somebody got paid for writing all those books and movies and television shows, I abandoned my previous ambition (beachcomber), and became a writer.

I've worked as a high school teacher, an executive secretary, a soda jerk, a bank clerk, an accountant, and in Red Cross Youth Services. While working for the Red Cross, I met my husband, a widower with three young daughters. We married and had a fourth daughter. Their names are #1 Daughter, #2 Daughter, #3 Daughter and #4 Daughter.

Small town life agrees with me. I like the interconnectedness of everything and everybody. The internet is a little like a small town: I frequently "run into" an old friend in a new venue. I like connecting and reconnecting with people, meeting new friends and keeping in touch with the friends I already have.

My writing reflects this love of network. I try to remember, in my books and stories, that no one exists in total isolation, but in a web of connections to family, friends, colleagues, self at former stages of maturity, perceptions and self-images. Most of my work is fantasy, science fiction and/or mystery, though I write horror, humor, romance, mainstream or anything else that suits the story and character.

I've had stories in anthologies, on-line and print publications, including Oceans of the Mind and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress anthologies 22 and 23, on coffee cans and the wall of an Indian restaurant in Louisville, Kentucky.

Professionally, I'm a member of Southern Indiana Writers and Green River Writers.

Reviews

[Carl Brookins · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jack Pitt is a woman-chasing assistant prosecutor in a small city whose life is about to experience a drastic change. He rises in the pre-dawn to run the city streets. Elsewhere two apparently middle-aged women rise to go about their daily activities. One is hippy-raised Life Coach Injustice H. Chocolate, the other, Doris Winston. Injustice is commonly called Juss and she has just hired a new secretary. He’s named Kerry Dashingly. Now readers will divine all they need to know about the style and flavor of this crime novel, a deep, well-designed dive into the complicated and sometimes dangerous life of amateur sleuth, Juss Chocolate.
Human relationships and personal judgments are at the heart of this novel, which carries forward through traffic accidents, death threats and murder attempts, the development of those many relationships.
The novel is well-written, moves steadily and logically to its conclusion with several well-developed central characters and a range of philosophical points of view. Although the story concerns murder most vicious, the main thrust of this cozy story is the development of many relationships among the characters and should be read for enjoyment of that.