Grievous Bodily Harm: A Hardboiled Anthology

by Sam M. Phillips (Editor), Adam Bennett (Editor), John Joseph Ryan (Contributor)

A shadowy silhouette stands beyond a lone street light, the brim of a hat pulled low. Their glowing cigarette tip flashes off dark, intense eyes. In the distance, sirens wail, but they’re already too late. Blood pools around a body, and smoke coils up from the barrel of the murder weapon. But who pulled the trigger? The hardboiled detective is back, mixed in with mafiosos, murderers, crime lords, and femme fatales. Right where they feel at home. Inside GRIEVOUS BODILY HARM you’ll find thrilling tales of violence, deception, mystery, and murder. Here, classic hardboiled crime takes on a new twist in the hands of an international syndicate of hard-bitten wordslingers. Now it’s a race against time to solve the case. Can you find the killer before they find you?

404 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 1, 2019

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anthologies, especially indie publishing anthologies, are really a crapshoot. Some of them have excellent stories, but they are often intermingled with pretty awful stories (generally stories that are too predictable or don't seem to go anywhere). I found that the majority of the anthologies I read are either three or four stars - since I arrive at my rating based on averaging each of the stories individually, it's darn near impossible for me to give five stars to an anthology.

That said, Grievous Bodily Harm is easily a five-star read. There were some wonderful tales in here - I particularly enjoyed The Hundred Year Old Sheriff by Timothy O'Leary and The God of the Lame by Mark Bruce (I enjoy a writer with a good sense of humor), though there was not a bad story in the bunch.

Highly recommended for lovers of short stories, detectives, noir, and really anyone who loves a well-spun yarn.

[Cameron Trost · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one of those anthologies where the title really does deliver. If you want hardboiled tales featuring plenty of bullets, blades, and broken noses, this is for you. It's not all thuggery and knuckledusters though - there's mystery and misdirection and you'll brush shoulders with femmes fatales and knights in, well, mackintoshes. You get the idea. If that's your thing, honey, down a bourbon with and let's crack this case!

[McKenzie Rae · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anthologies tend to be a mixed bag of good, bad, and meh. This is one of the rare anthologies where I didn't think there were any bad stories. They were all well written, but there also weren't any short stories that blew me away either. So four stars for doing the job of delivering dark, gritty murders and mysteries.