The Missing Martian

[ffutures]

I've scanned the third and last of the stories I wrote for the Midnight Rose Collective's fiction anthologies.

This one's from The Weerde: Book 2, the second in a series of books set in a world in which there are shape-changing primordial beings living amongst humanity. I'd rather not say much more about the background, since it builds up over the two books and works best if read that way.

Influences on this one include Raymond Chandler, Rex Stout, Ed McBain (who suggested the name of a detective), and numerous other crime writers of the forties and fifties. Most of the other character names are anagrams of bits of my name; the exception is Louis Ginsberg, a distant relative of my great-grandparents. One wasn't invented by me - Claude R Worlsman first appeared in the Call of Cthulhu module Statue of the Sorcerer by Chris Elliot and Richard Edwards, published by Games Workshop in the days when they were an RPG company.

On the whole I'm reasonably happy with this story, even after 12 years, though I think I would change the last few paragraphs a little if I were writing it today.

As usual I would be grateful for comments on spelling errors, typos, etc.

The Missing Martian