The Detectorate 7/6c (Finale)

(reading time: 57 minutes)

(Against the Grain will return after these messages from our sponsor)

Season seven of The Disasters is coming, better make sure you’re prepared.  You’ll need to call in sick, get the best spot on the couch, and make sure there’s at least one free pillow for back support.

You’ll need just the right snack too.  Popcorn gets salt everywhere and you have to microwave a new bag practically every episode.  Not to mention the calories.  It’s time to call Introgurt.  Convenient and healthy yogurts, available in twenty flavors, all delivered straight to your door in refrigerated bags with plenty of fixings.  We even deliver at night now, for those midnight premieres.  Check us out at Introgurt.com.

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The Detectorate 7/6c (Part Three)

(reading time: 46 minutes)

It was awfully quiet for a place where so much money changed hands.  There were tons of poker players there that night; as a crowd they tended to know how to keep their eyes down and their mouths shut.  Half of them wore sunglasses even though it was the middle of the night.  The other half had toothpicks in their mouths, just enough of a disturbance to make their tiniest smiles or frowns undetectable.

It was a private apartment, high above the streets of Midway, so excessive noise wouldn’t have helped anyway.  Still, it didn’t feel like much of a party.  The loudest noises were the clinking of glasses and the brief scrapes of USB drives docking and undocking from various ports.  Every dealer had a box next to them with at least four ports, perfect repositories for the digital currency while the guests gambled.  Should the police burst in the boxes would automatically cancel everything they held and wipe their own memories. Continue reading

The Detectorate 7/6c (Part Two)

(reading time: 47 minutes)

(Scene Change)

Eirene wondered if her father had more of a literary talent than she had initially thought, because the two houses that made up the Odeck family compound did appear to be stitched together, like the arguing children of a mad scientist.  They were bound by a tunnel of unpainted wood, with nearly every board having come from a different source.  There was one window on the tunnel, its frame an actual picture frame.

It was a nightmarish playhouse already, but the image was further enhanced by the entertainment and sport debris littered all over the yard and in the branches of a giant twisted elm tree, the roots of which crawled into the gray asphalt driveway and broke it into chunks like lava rock. Continue reading

The Detectorate 7/6c (Part One)

(blurb)

Police work has been the subject of fiction for an age, but what about television police work?  Dive into this quirky novella that blends the twists and turns of a murder conspiracy with the trappings of hokey law dramas, complete with time slots, character tropes, crossovers, and commercial breaks!

(reading time: 46 minutes) (reading for entire novella: 3 hours, 16 minutes)

The Detectorate 7/6c

by

Blaine Arcade

This program is a work of fiction.  Any similarity to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

Intro Narration: Law enforcement is taken seriously in the township of Little Pond, Massachusetts.  A new crime wave, worsened by local corruption, has convinced its people that elections are now necessary for its detectives as well as its sheriff.  The first two candidates for this experimental program, called the Detectorate, are Eirene Amstead and Cincinattus Golfort.  These stories are the evidence of their efforts, conviction, and dedication to their constituents.

Intro theme tune by Zizi Caraway

Produced by Heath Moose

Episode 17: By the Horns Continue reading