Books
Small Apartments
Stephen Osborne
The Winner of the 23rd International 3-Day Novel Writing Contest (a venerable institution) is Small Apartments (Anvil Press), written and pleasantly illustrated by Chris Millis, who lives in Saratoga Springs, New York, and has worked as a “sportswriter and hotdog vendor.” This is a classic crime novel: the protagonist is a reclusive peeping Tom who finds himself in a dilemma summed up concisely by a terse narrator: “He had to do something with his fat, dead, Italian landlord before midnight.” The plot rolls on from here, and in its course we meet, among others, a hophead, an unpleasant old man, a couple of funky firefighters, a dog named Bernard and the author of Am I Crazy? also known as the “TV Mental Guru Guy.” Good snappy stuff, with a necessary touch of deus ex machina toward the end.