Short Stories to Entertain

My dad was a fella with an Einstein brain from a not so well-off family. The way his brain worked was a wonder. It took him a while to gather his thoughts which kind of suggested he was indecisive which was not the case. When it came to it, he made a choice and stuck right on with it. At fourteen he left school and worked as an apprentice bookbinder of all things. At fifteen he had enough to pay for night school. Electronics was the thing he thought. At sixteen his brother joined him. At eighteen they both qualified. At nineteen in 1940 he was in the RAF mending radios on bombers. His brother mended radios in tanks in the desert and Italy. In 1946 he got married on a whim to a nurse who nursed him. Nothing so romantic as a war wound. An in-growing toena il. In 1950 he was developing radar and early computers. His brother fixed TVs in South Africa after emigrating.     What is all this about you might ask. A life history. In a way for sure but mostly it is about taking the p...

  Raphael Ravenscroft suddenly fires up and fills the speakers of the bedside digital clock. That riff. And what a riff. That infectious sound, a creation of pure genius by the coming together of one of the greatest saxophone players of the modern age and the burgeoning talent of ex busker and Stealers Wheel frontman Gerry Rafferty. Eight in the morning and time to get up. Tommy Tucker, as is his usual practice, wakes but does not turn off the alarm. He always, most definitely always , listens to the entire track. Baker Street containing the best example of passionate saxophone playing. Ever.

  JUST WHO IS ELLIOT SHALLOT has been published -  A con man scams a lady but who scams the con man and who will end up dead.  CLICK TO BUY: https://www.amazon.co.uk/ VISIT MY WEBSITE: https://www.martindixonshortstories.com/ for details of this, other books and future publications. The First Chapter Can Be Read On My Website SHORT BLURB: Matt is a con man. And he’s a good one. But this time he’s picked the wrong mark. Maria’s mum has just handed over a priceless heirloom and the consequences are devastating. Now Maria needs to find Matt and recover the necklace before the head of the Family takes control. Although willing to allow Maria time, Family Boss Gianni has a backup plan. And from his villa on the shores of Lake Como, he’s putting it into action. When Matt is shot, he convinces Elliot to help him but has he made another mistake.

 DOUBLE SWITCH (How to get rich with a shotgun and a flamingo) is finally published. Click on: https://www.amazon.co.uk/DOUBLE-SWITCH  for details. Read below the short blurb and the first chapter. Stanley Holden’s all screwed up. His wife has died in a car crash. But things are about to change. Doris is screwed up. Her husband walked out leaving her with a young daughter but she still finds the time to talk Stanley out of his depression. Stanley wants to retire and has an exit strategy. Rob a jewellery shop. Rob a bank. Make a heap of cash. Simple. But he has a problem. For the perfect crime he needs a man with a shotgun and a flamingo. Benny Morgan has a sawn-off. A small-time crook hitting soft targets with a life dredging the bottom of the pile. He wants out. Enter his saviour, Stanley Holden. Detective Inspector Dave Simmons is tracking Benny and his cousin but is getting nowhere fast. After a hold-up that Stanley witnesses, Dave latches onto him and is convinced he’s ...

Walter Bobkin was an enigma, he disliked the name Walter so much he referred to himself as Bob. Just simply Bob. Bob Bobkin . That is unless he were to seek employment in which case he was determined to use Walter as he felt, even with his minimal qualifications, he would secure a much more professional position with such a title which is of course an incredibly snobbish attitude to have in this modern world. But then Bob is a snob, a person who lives in a superficial world on the periphery of reality. He is a man of independent means derived from his father's hard and industrious life so, barring investment disasters, it was unlikely that he would ever need to work anyway. A confirmed bachelor who had never really been interested in women, very set in his ways and a routine that was cast in stone. He was maybe about fifty, a tall man, perhaps as lofty as six foot four, but straight sided and spindly. He certainly did not have the physique or stature of a prize fighter, somethin...

Click on THE LINK below to read the first chapters of six Crime and Mystery Novels already published or shortly to be published. Included with the chapters are details of release dates or sites where the books can be purchased.  CLICK ON THIS LINK  https://www.martindixonshortstories.com/  

The First Chapter of Sniper, Sniper  Book published 10th January 2024 as ebook and paperback. Click to buy  https://www.amazon.co.uk/ Take a look up the carriageway and you would see traffic all the way from the lay-by to the bridge where it sped around the corner and straight down the hill. Concrete, a whole lot of it, went into building that bridge. Two lanes spanned the four lane bypass and then some as it carried over a wide bramble lined ditch next to the furthest lane. Water almost overflowed its margins as it drained from the gently rising fields beyond. Fields full of brown and black cows most sitting but all chewing, with tall oak and beech trees beyond. Go past the bridge a few yards and the road bent around to the right behind the first main support and a long bank of gorse and low bushes. At that point sight of the traffic disappeared.  Visibility had improved a great deal with the wind slight and constant. A big difference from the howling storm that had been...

Mugs Millman, in response to the commotion behind the closed door, shut the till, cleared the bar of glasses, put on his dark specs and black pork pie hat and waved away the two waitresses waiting to collect loaded trays. They knew the routine. They picked up their full trays from the bar. Sauntered towards the back and stood to one side near the booth where two dark suited men were seated. 

Disturbed by the draft coming through the open fanlight the floral curtains swirled as Rita entered the cold sitting room. The ticking clock on the mantelpiece said four-thirty-eight. It was already getting dark. Lighting the gas fire for some instant heat she jumped when it banged. She always jumped. She then sat in her favourite armchair, the one with the big yellow comfy cushions. Picked up her book and blue rimmed glasses. A romantic fiction by an American author that made her wish she had made better choices in he r life. Then all hell broke out. The thick dividing wall separating the attached houses did not enough to dampen the row. Shouting and screaming and crashing as things were thrown.  

The late evening news that day had said about a man being shot six times. All in the chest. All by machine gun fire. A tall man about sixty maybe, with dark hair and a moustache and rich. He was extremely rich, that was obvious. The house was one of those right up there swanky places. His cleaner had found him slumped over on the sofa in his sitting room. White shirt a mess as you can imagine. Reading glasses broken. Tall wine glass spilled. Did she scream? No one really knew but you would think so, wouldn’t you? With the blood and all and two dead eyes staring right up at her as she walked into the room. The vacant wide sort. Kind of stuck open.             No signs of entry so the police said. Everything was locked. Front door security chain on. No windows broken. They were stumped; the police were. Was he on his own? That was a question they asked themselves and the cleaner of course. She didn’t know. How would she? She was not there until...