Mere Smoke by Jonathan Call

The cat burglar they call The Smoke turns good Samaritan. But when he stumbles over a body while doing a simple safe-cracking job, he begins to wonder if the guy he’s trying to help isn’t the actual killer.

Sometimes, doing a guy a favor can blow up in your face

Mere Smoke – a vintage noir mystery

Category: Mystery – Hard-Boiled

A Vintage Pulp Heist Mystery. Every heist is a perfect heist…on paper!

I stopped to get my shoes shined and disaster followed.

The guy getting his shoes shined next to me is an ex-con, a street rat, and overall despicable human being. Yet he had plans for the perfect heist. Mastermind? Hardly. But the idea was sound.

A bank is scheduled to be demolished. Inside is a long-forgotten secret—a lucrative secret. Empty bank, no guards, no alarms. What can go wrong?

Ah, but things get messy, deception, murder, gun play…you know, the works. And soon I’m scrambling to track down a killer that’s supposedly been dead for six years.

That is, if the killer doesn’t get me first.