Texas, Hold Your Queens

When the body of an undocumented Mexican immigrant is found abandoned on a roadside, Detectives Mason Page and Farrah Tyler have no clue how a throwaway case that neither wants to let go will affect their lives. On the job, Page and Tyler are the only two female detectives in El Paso CID’s Crimes Against Persons unit, and have to deal with the condescension of their male counterparts. Off the clock, the two have developed an intimate friendship over the past seven years, one that will be jeopardized when the murder case puts them on suspect Reed Gabler’s trail.

TEXAS, HOLD YOUR QUEENS weaves between the hunt for Gabler and the fall out of Page and Tyler’s confrontation with him. Will the truth destroy Page and Tyler or make them stronger?

Praise for Texas, Hold Your Queens

“Texas, Hold Your Queens is a smoldering, hardboiled novella with a unique mix of violence and tenderness, identity, revenge, and fate. Two pieces of pop culture emerged as I was reading this. One makes perfect sense. With its southern setting and heat, Queens evokes True Detective (the excellent first season), with its reliance on a deft, complex personal relationship between two cops on the hunt for a monster. The other reference is a little more off the cuff. But reading Queens, I couldn’t stop recalling the old Joe Jackson song “The Real Men,” and the line: “If there’s war between the sexes / then there’ll be no people left.” And if war has been declared, I am taking the side of Mason Page and Farrah Tyler.”

—Joe Clifford, author of December Boys and Lamentation

“A deeply affecting love story beats at the heart of this terrific southwestern noir.”

—Nick Kolakowski, author of A Brutal Bunch of Heartbroken Saps

“As spare and evocative as a desert sunset, Texas, Hold Your Queens, is a stiletto of a tale aimed right at your heart. A crime story about the blurry line between justice and the law and the severe consequences that result when that line is crossed. Ms. Croswell’s dark story lingered in my mind long after I finished the last sentence.”

—Mike Miner, author of Hurt Hawks and Prodigal Sons

About Marie S. Crosswell

Marie S. Crosswell is a novelist, short story writer, and poet. She is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, where she concentrated on creative writing and friendship studies. Her short crime fiction has previously appeared in Thuglit, Plots with Guns, Flash Fiction Offensive, Beat to a Pulp, Betty Fedora, Dark Corners, and Locked and Loaded: Both Barrels Vol. 3. Her novella LONE STAR ON A COWBOY HEART is available from Less Than Three Press . She lives in Arizona with her black cat.

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Established in 2011, Shotgun Honey provides crime fiction lovers a regular diet of flash fiction. Living by the simple tenet of keeping it lean and mean, Shotgun Honey has published over 800 flash fiction stories from more than 400 authors from around the world.