Only the Good Die Young: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Billy Joel

From Cold Spring Harbor in 1971 to River of Dreams in 1993, Billy Joel released a dozen studio albums that remade the face of American pop music, produced twenty-six Top 10 singles (on Billboard's Top 100 and Adult Contemporary charts), and earned the Piano Man six Grammys. Although he hasn't released a recording of new songs in almost thirty years, Joel's live performances continue to electrify audiences around the globe-and until COVID-19 put things on hold he had sold out New York's Madison Square Garden for a record-shattering seventy-four consecutive monthly shows!

In this collection, twelve award-winning writers of short crime fiction tackle the Joel catalog, and the result-edited by Josh Pachter, whose The Beat of Black Wings: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Joni Mitchell earned rave reviews in 2020-is a journey down life's mean streets with a soundtrack by one of the great singer-songwriters of our time, and contributors Michael Bracken, Jeff Cohen, David Dean, John M. Floyd, Barb Goffman, James D.F. Hannah, Richard Helms, Robert Lopresti, Jenny Milchman, Terrie Farley Moran, Richie Narvaez, and Pachter himself are donating a third of their royalties to support the work of the Joel Foundation.

In the Gospel According to Billy, only the good die young. Within these pages, though, Death is an equal-opportunity exterminator, and the stories you'll find here don't just hit the charts: they go all the way to Number One ... with a bullet!

Author: Josh Pachter
Publisher: Untreed Reads Publishing
Published: 04/27/2021
Pages: 208
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.69lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.48d
ISBN: 9781949135428

About the Author
Pachter, Josh: - JOSH PACHTER is a writer, editor, and translator, and the 2020 recipient of the Short Mystery Fiction Society's Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for Lifetime Achievement. Almost a hundred of his short crime stories have appeared in EQMM, AHMM, and many other places. He is the editor of The Great Filling Station Holdup: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Jimmy Buffett (Down and Out Books, 2021), The Beat of Black Wings: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Joni Mitchell (Untreed Reads, 2020), The Misadventures of Nero Wolfe (Mysterious Press, 2020), and other anthologies, and his translations of stories by Dutch and Flemish crime writers appear regularly in EQMM.Bracken, Michael: - MICHAEL BRACKEN has written several books, including the private eye novel All White Girls, but he's better known as the author of more than thirteen hundred short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Espionage, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, The Best American Mystery Stories, and many other anthologies and periodicals. He is the editor of Black Cat Mystery Magazine, the Anthony Award finalist The Eyes of Texas: Private Eyes from the Panhandle to the Piney Woods, and other anthologies. He lives, writes, and edits in Texas.Goffman, Barb: - BARB GOFFMAN loves writing, reading, air conditioning, and her dog, not necessarily in that order. She's won the Agatha, Macavity, and Silver Falchion awards for her short stories, and she's been a finalist twenty-seven times for national mystery short-story awards, including the Anthony and Derringer. Her book Don't Get Mad, Get Even won the Silver Falchion for the best collection of 2013. Her stories have also appeared in AHMM, EQMM, BCMM and a number of anthologies, including Crime Travel, a time-travel crime anthology she edited. Barb lives in Winchester, Virginia, and works as a freelance editor and proofreader.