"Shots," by Claire Booth

"Shots,"  by Claire Booth, in Lost and Loaded: A Gun's Tale, edited by Colin Conway, Original Ink Press, 2024.

I have a story in the book.

Raina's friend Tina is getting married and she and all the bridesmaids are out with a limousine for a night in the town.  Something goes disastrously wrong.  But Raina is also aware of something else that is going much more subtly wrong...

It is interesting how one author's work can remind you of someone else's, even though they are completely different.

Booth's story of a girl's night out makes me think of Richard Stark, the hardboiled alter ego of Donald Westlake, and his novels about a hardboiled burglar named Parker.  In terms of subject matter and character these two works have little in common.  But there is  a style connection.

One trick of Stark's I have always admired is this: He will give detailed descriptions of something, like the planning of a crime, and then when you get to what you think is the climax he tosses it off like an afterthought.  In one book, having gotten his hands on his enemy, Parker breaks "three bones, all fairly important."   End of description.

Booth does something like that here, leaving the reader to work out exactly what happens, and why.  Editor Chantelle Aimee Osman once advised "Don't steal the reader's crayons." In this clever tale Booth leaves you plenty to color in.