1-Defense attorney Bob Larson enjoys his job. He likes justice; he likes being right. Usually, he thinks right and wrong are really easy to spot. Then he ends up representing a young Navy Seal who shot and killed an elderly woman—and claims it was in self-defense. Who's really the bad guy?
2-Samuel sleepwalks. He also thinks he loves another man's wife. He's more surprised than anyone when he's arrested for that man's murder. Did he do it? Or is he being set up to take the fall?
3-Mystery writer Dan Rodriguez takes the subway every day. Every day, nothing happens. He wears earbuds and a hoodie; he's ignored, and he ignores. Then one evening, on his way home from a stressful meeting with his publisher, Dan is startled out of his funk when a frantic Middle-Eastern man knocks him over at a dead run, then races up the stairs—pursued by several other mysterious looking thugs. The Middle-Eastern man is shot; and Dan discovers a small, wrapped package in the front pocket of his hoodie. What's inside, and what does he need to do to survive the answer?
4-Wealthy, unmarried Anne Lamont is murdered, and she leaves her entire fortune to a man she met two weeks before, putting suspicion squarely on him. Detective Arnold thinks the man is innocent. He has a week to make his case before this goes before a jury. But when he digs into Anne's background, he finds the sweet old matron wasn't at all what she seemed.
5- A headless corpse is found in a freshly-dug grave in Arkansas. The local police chief, Arley Socket, has never had to deal with more than missing gas cans and treed cats. His exploration of this weird murder digs up a mystery older than the 100-year-old town of Jericho that harkens all the way back to a European blood-feud.
6-Someone is murdering homeless people in Phoenix, Arizona. Detective Sally Fortnight is determined to get to the bottom of it... but what she uncovers may be more deadly than she could ever guess.
7-On the Lovely Lady riverboat in 1900's Louisiana, professional gambler Lacroix is just doing his thing when a scream startles him and the other players from the poker table. It turns out the captain of the steamboat has been murdered, and only someone on the boat could've pulled it off. Lacroix already has a record. In two days, the Lady will pull into Shreveport, where he stands a good chance of being arrested... unless he can suss out the killer first.
8- Detective Donna Madison is on a completely routine case (bootleg watches, just so you know) when she stumbles across a ring of jewel thieves. Two murders, a clever fortune-teller, and a stuffed cat filled with clues later, and Donna finds herself uncovering a far bigger mystery than where stolen watches go.
9- It is the Cold War era. Private Eye Charles Nick searches for a missing cryptanalyst, all the while dodging an obsessed FBI agent who thinks Nick is a communist spy. The cryptanalyst, by the way, went missing for a good reason: he might have cracked the latest Russian spy code, and he's running for his life.
10-1850's England: elderly Doris and her six young wards are caught in a storm and forced to ask for shelter at an enormous manor deep in the English countryside. But all is not well in this home, and before long, Doris faces a bizarre problem: the manor's lord, Sir Geoffrey, claims his estranged wife Alice is going to murder him that evening. Alice, meanwhile, claims that Geoffrey is going to murder her. After dinner, both are found dead, in the library, seated as if having a rational discussion, but dead as mice. There is no obvious murder weapon, and quite possibly, the murderer is loose in the manor. Doris is no detective, but she might as well figure this out. Given that storm, help won't be coming until it's too late.
Do any of these story ideas get your inner-criminal devising?
Let me know in the comments.
have a lovely day/night shiners.
-A