Monthly Archives: November 2025

Nov25

A Piece of Flash Fiction

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I usually don’t post my own writing here but last night, I had a migraine and when those hit, I try to do some deep breathing exercises to keep myself from vomiting or crying with the pain and nausea. My husband has been ill since before Halloween and spent 13 days in the hospital after spending two weeks unable to get out of his recliner. He came home Sunday night and is still so weak, it’s scary to see him. Of course, this all triggered my migraine.

As I lay there doing my deep breathing, I suddenly found myself chanting (inner monologue) Pizza, Pasta, and Spaghettios. As I waited for my meds to kick in, this little story came to me and so I thought I’d share it. So, here it is, my 2:30 am little ditty.

Pizza, Pasta, and Spaghettios

From the moment the door to DiMaggio’s Pizza Parlor opened and she strolled in, he knew he was going to marry her someday. When she walked over to the old fashioned juke box, he thrust his pool cue toward his best friend, the college quarterback, and told him to finish the game.

He took coins from his pocket and asked her what song she wanted to play. From that day forward, they were together and spent many an evening having pizza at DiMaggio’s and playing that song they loved. Their song.

When they both became professionals and paid off their student loans, with their new found financial ability to treat themselves, they experimented with pasta. Carbonara, shrimp scampi on angel hair, penne ala vodka, and clams with linguine. They chose pasta over pizza for a number of years.

When the children came, the fancy pasta took a back seat to spaghettios. They didn’t mind as the kids loved them and they were happy to see them eat a semblance of their favorite Italian cuisine.

When the children were older, DiMaggio’s became a favorite place again as the kids found their love of various flavors of pizza there. Cheese to start and moving on to pepperoni, but as their palates became more sophisticated, they ventured into mushrooms, peppers, and even anchovies on occasion.

With the children grown, married and on their own, he and she returned to their fancy pasta. Carbonara, shrimp scampi on angel hair, penne ala vodka, and clams with linguine.

In his old age, with her gone to heaven, he sometimes ate spaghettios straight from the can over the sink, her favorite song running through his mind. Their song. For eternity.

Nov21

REVIEW: Miller and Kelby: Major Case Squad Files by Maxine Flam

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Thank you to the author and Rosie’s Reviews for the copy of this book to review.

It took me a while to get through these stories. Each was pretty short and could easily be read quickly. When I did read them, I read two at a time during my lunch breaks. They were okay reads but I wasn’t compelled to return to them promptly.

While the premise of each story was creative and well thought out, the two main characters were written with very similar personalities and I was glad there were a lot of voice tags so the reader could tell who was speaking.

There were a few things that bothered me about the whole series of stories. There was a police psychologist that the two main characters consulted on over 70% of the tales. This guy was a mind reading savant of some sort because every case, on very little information, he nailed what kind of suspect they should look for; it was especially jarring in the eleventh story. In that one, he barely knew one thing about the crime and spouted off a lot of details. When the reader was invited in the head of the perpetrator, his thoughts mirrored exactly what the psychologist said was the type of killer and the motivation for murder they were looking for in their quest to solve the case. This happened in each story where the psychologist gave advice to the main characters.

there was another thing that bothered this reader. The two partners would set up a stake out at a particular location and that very same night, the killer would show up to their location.  I know these are short stories, but they were too easily solved with the psychologist and the killer playing right into their set up to catch him.  There were no moments of disappointment that they had to try again at another time. I felt there was no real drama or really high stakes (until the eleventh story which was the one with car salesman murders).

My favorite story was the one with the food critic (story number ten) as none of the things that bothered me were present in that story. I’m wondering if the stories were presented in the order the author wrote them as it appears her story telling improved as this reader kept reading.

In short, the writer of these stories has a nice way with prose and plotting. I just wanted the stories to be more fleshed out and a little harder for the protagonists to solve, along with more high stakes as there were in stories eleven and twelve.

3 stars

BLURB:

“Two Detectives, One City

The time: the late 1970s

The place: Los Angeles, California

Joseph (Joe) Miller and William (Bill) Kelby are detectives with the Major Case Squad. They get the hard-to-solve cases. And they solve them the old-fashioned way with grit and determination, forensics, and help from the department psychologist.

Miller and Kelby are a dedicated detective team that Los Angeles turns to when there are unsolved murders in the city. And solving murders is their specialty. They put their lives on the line every day for the citizens of Los Angeles, a city that rarely sleeps.”