Short Story Reviews: Thanksgiving Leftovers

After the Thanksgiving feast, we became weary of having turkey sandwiches for lunch at work everyday. I had purchased an expensive free range organic turkey. I couldn't afford to toss the remains. Sunday night, I decided to try my hand at baking a turkey pot pie. It was terrific!

The same goes for the stories in The Killer Wore Cranberry: A Fifth Serving of Chaos. Thanksgiving may be over, but these leftovers are still delicious. There are recipes, too!

I read four stories this weekend, starting with Turkey Underfoot by KM Rockwood. I like my mysteries with a side of cute. In this tale, the family cat is the narrator. An obnoxious rich uncle is ruining Thanksgiving with his rude behavior and threats to write various relatives out of his will. Something has to be done, but all efforts to deal with the uncle fail. Until the cat gets involved.

Herschel Cozine's humorous story Kid Kelly features a young boy as the narrator. Trevor is obsessed with a detective television show, and takes his investigating seriously. When grandma bakes a pie that is to die for, Trevor kicks into high gear to prevent a murder.

In Killer Bro-vember by Kelley Lortz, Detectives Brewer and Gupta enter the world of Bro-Body Extreme where body builders have disdain for Cross Fit trainers, and everyone abhors eating to excess. When a famous body builder dies with a stack of pies in his car, there are two mysteries for the detectives to solve. The one his colleagues and wife seem most concerned with are why the man had a load of carbs and sugar in his vehicle.

---

​I chuckled reading the next story in the anthology when the inflatable turkey appeared. I had just posed beside one at a local turkey trot fundraising race. Later, several of my neighbors placed Christmas inflatables on their lawns. One Santa Claus lurks in shadows under the neighbor's eaves, making for a frightening nighttime scene.

​Back to the short story - in Nameless Turkey Trot of Terror by Bobbi A. Chukran, heroine Kendra negotiates the suddenly busy streets of Nameless, as the small Texas town decides to host a Thanksgiving celebration. Everything seems to be going as planned, until a box of money is stolen from the fair, and a turkey goes missing.

Don't think this Thanksgiving-themed anthology is stale just because the holiday is over. Like any good feast, the leftovers are even better the next day.

I reviewed a story recently by author Robert Lopresti. He discusses choosing titles in his article on the AHMM Trace Evidence blog, Insert Clever Title Here.

---