Sunday, August 16, 2015

A Box of Horses, by Steve Bailey.

"A Box of Horses," by Steve Bailey, in Thuglit", 17, 2015.

Some stories you read on the edge of your seat, not because of the suspense in the telling, but because there are so many ways the author could go wrong.  Will he make it to the end without screwing up?   Obviously Steve Bailey did or we wouldn't be having this discussion. 

Dianne is a woman who does bad things.  She has her reasons, ugly events that happened in her past. 

She makes her living cleaning people's houses and she is "an explorer, a secret digger inside people's hidden places."  Yes, she steals from her clients, but she is much more interested in investigating their lives than in copping their goods, which in any case she is more likely to keep as souvenirs than to sell.

One day she discovers that a client - a woman with MS and her nine-year-old daughter - have a new neighbor, and she immediately recognizes that this man is in some ways like her.  Up to no good.  And maybe now she knows why several young girls in the city have vanished in the last year. 

Trouble is, he also recognizes her for what she is...  And you think YOUR relationships are problematic.

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