Nursery Rhyme Noir

I wrote a series of murder mysteries based on nursery rhymes. These short stories are about as serious as you'd expect, but some are unsuitable for young children.

A sample story:

Nursery Rhyme:

Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,

Eating her curds and whey,

Along came a spider and sat down beside her,

And frightened Miss Muffet away.

I thought there might be a bit more to this...

Arachnophobia

The trouble actually started when Little Miss Muffet was busted for

gambling. She was operating under the alias of Wax Liploc. I think she was

involved with the Pumpkin Eater prostitution/white slavery ring, but making

bets was the only thing we could pin on her. She was out on the street

again in less than a year.

My name is Deadbolt, Hasp Deadbolt, and I'm a private eye. I'd been hired

by the City on a temporary basis. They'd been short-handed since the Jack

Horner debacle. I had the job of seeing that Muffet went straight.

For a while she seemed to be adhering to the requirements of her probation.

She spent a lot of time in the library, checking out books on explosives

and poisons, and audio-visual items like "Arabic in 4 easy lessons" but I

wasn't fooled. She was a pie waiting to spew birds, a shoe waiting to vomit

kids.

Then it happened. She was in the park, eating a light lunch on a sort of

portable stool she'd brought with her, and I was pretending to sail a small

boat in the pond. It was not easy with no wind. I heard a scream and looked

up. A wolf spider the size of a small horse was hitting on Muffet. As I ran

up I heard it say "Hey baby, how about you fly into my parlor?" It wrapped

a few hairy legs around her and sat down right on the tuffet with her.

Muffet screamed again and wrenched herself free. She whipped out the

umbrella that she always carried with her and she brought it down. Again.

And again. And again. I jerked it out of her hand. She was still screaming.

I slapped her once, twice, and she shut her mouth with a shudder. She was

spattered from head to toe with spider guts. All she would say, over and

over again as she was led away, was "I hate spiders!"

Oh yes. She got off on a plea of temporary insanity. If you ask me, that

girl is going to be trouble.

Available from Alban Lake
http://store.albanlake.com/product/nursery-rhyme-noir/