Tuesday, March 3, 2020


Eurasian Gambit
a Detective Science-Fiction Novel
(by S.T. Fargo)

Eurasian Gambit—a science-fiction detective novel (crime fiction)

Read this online book for FREE! › Almost every criminal plot on this planet revolves around money or sex (or both), and that applies to the wicked case of this private eye too. It’s a near-future genre-bending sci-fi story—crime fiction with a political twist, an alien invasion novel, and detective sci-fi combined—that our world alone is way too small to contain.

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“It was the middle of March, and the weather sucked. Streets had turned into rivers, the water following their curves as if the entire city were some weird urban canyon. Here and there, puddles were almost as big as Hudson Bay, and parks looked like Louisiana swamps. The heavy wind made raindrops whip people’s faces like small daemon tails. The winters here are not what they used to be. It’s all different now, probably because of the Chinese. They messed up the global climate about a decade ago with their large-scale industrial revolution, and the country disintegrated, leaving the rest of the world to deal with the consequences.

I was sitting in my chair in my miniature office on Lacuna Drive 85 with a glass of White Bear whiskey in my hand and my feet on the desk, watching a portable TV set placed next to my shoes. I had just followed the latest news on the crisis in Britain and the wild idea they had to put the country up for auction. My desk was actually so crammed with the device that I could accidentally kick it down if I stretched my legs a little more, but I couldn’t care less. Firstly, the TV set was insanely old and, therefore, very cheap—ironically, it was made in China—and secondly, even if it fell, it still wouldn’t have hit the floor since my office was only slightly larger than the desk itself. There was simply not enough room on both sides for the device to fall.

For the sake of being precise, I will mention here that my office was precisely two hundred and thirty-five by two hundred and forty-five centimeters. It was the smallest one in the whole building and probably in the whole of Greenland too, and I wasn’t even sure it was a good idea that I rented it in the first place, partly because I wasn’t using it much but also because of the money—I just didn’t have it.

To be even more precise, I should probably note that I never have enough money. Moneyless is my natural state of being, and sometimes I wonder whether god created me just to serve as a byword—so that people could say, “poor like a Murphy.” On the other hand, I’m not entirely sure it was god who created me, anyway. I had always had doubts about it, but after aliens turned up, it suddenly felt ridiculous to believe in such a thing. Their appearance made a total mess of my head!

From somewhere in the depths of my desk, the telephone gave a hollow ring and startled me from my thoughts. I slowly put the glass down and reached out to open the right lowermost drawer. I pulled out the handset to say a brief “hello.”

At first, no one answered. I could only hear heavy breathing at the other end of the line. Then someone cleared their throat and cautiously asked, “Mr. Mellrow, the PI?””




Tags: science-fiction crime novels, sci-fi detective novels, crime books, detective fiction, detective sci-fi, private eyes.


You can also read for free:

Damn you, Detective!—a Sci-Fi Crime Novel and Detective Fiction

...and even more stuff on:

www.stfargo.com