Alex Carrick’s Blog

Paying attention to detail solved the case. There were several abnormalities to note about the two-foot-tall fish tank. A small amount of water had been displaced, as if someone’s arm had been inserted all the way; the ceramic castle on the bottom appeared to have been moved on its granular base, possibly for aesthetic reasons; […]

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The following are the jounal entries of Mr. Justin Smythe, a gentleman hobby farmer living outside the lovely theatre community of Stratford, Ontario where a widely-known Shakespearean festival is held each year. Mr. Smythe’s life proceeds quietly as he tends his cattle and occasionally takes walks in 30 acres he has set aside on his property for […]

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Chief Inspector Beige was never more glad to be home. He’d spent three days entangled in the lives of the rich and famous and was more off-balance than at any other time in his 45-year-old life. It had been a roller-coaster ride that lost its amusement appeal long before the final plummet.   Beige’s detective career spanned […]

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Hostess Betty Bernard didn’t know what she was letting herself in for when she invited the television producer Mark Gatheral and the newspaper critic Gracie Phitts to the same soirée. Mr. Gatheral was a corpulent, but still handsome, man of 45. Ms. Phitts was an attractive dynamic go-getter in her early 30s. They could both […]

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Now that he was dead, Norman Watts was in possession of certain information that someone in the living world would have given an arm and a leg to discover. Forget Halloween or Dia de los Muertos or any of those other days of the year when the departed are supposed to be revered. They might have been […]

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Pedro Martinez had entered the United States illegally. There was no denying the fact. He was part of a group of 20 individuals brought over in the false back of an 18-wheeler from Mexico in early spring two years ago. To pay for the privilege, he made a cash contribution to his wife’s distant cousin, Jose […]

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Little Jimmy Flotsam, aged 10 and living in Tampa, had never known Christmas. The current year was 2025 and in 2015 Santa Claus and his wife had wrapped things up at the North Pole and skipped town, so to speak. In a sadly mimicking blow, Jimmy’s father abandoned his family when his only child was […]

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Frank had learned how to control his dreams. He’d never experienced nightmares before. That’s why the past several months were so disturbing for him.   His power over dreams first came when he was a little boy. He saw a magazine photo of Michelangelo’s famous scene on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome’s Vatican. […]

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The devil and God were having lunch at the Zeus and Apollo restaurant on The Danforth in Toronto. The devil was partial to Greek food and, while God preferred Middle Eastern fare, He was content to let the devil have his way.   The two didn’t like each other much. But God didn’t see how […]

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A spate of public rudeness lately has raised the question of how society has come to this sorry pass. Kanye West in the world of hip hop, Serena Williams in tennis and Joe Wilson in Washington’s political hot house all stepped over the traditional bounds of civility in the past week. What are the trends that […]

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