Peter Standish Evans

Author and Poet - Peter Standish Evans wrote ”Ominous: Borders: Coffee" as the first novel in the 'Ominous Crimes' Paris series. The novel’s ‘romantic’ and ‘noir’ psychological themes wander the darker sidewalks of the city; the book’s characters crossing dangerous personal borders.

He has recently completed his new novel.

Excerpt from: The Crime Novel

‘Ominous Borders Coffee’

The Inspector sat uneasy in his chair at the café. The feeling the air around him was developing a light blue haze would not leave him. He knew this instinctive warning only too well and lifted his small camera from the table before taking three wide-angle snaps of the scene: the people, a street, a sidewalk; Paris on a bustling summer morning. He had a sixth sense that skated easily over the most cobbled of Parisian streets. The camera logged the time and date, and the Inspector’s notebook and pencil stayed where they were, resting on the metal table. His SP 2022 pistol remained hidden in its paddle holster the way he preferred, beneath a light deconstructed jacket which he wore both summer and winter.

He blamed the blue air sensation that engulfed him on ‘dark notions’ – the thoughts and plans of people whose primary intentions were toxic. Normally his instincts proved correct, which was a shame. Paris had been quiet these last days and the coffee had been rather special, not merely good. Holding the cup to his lips with his left hand, he picked up the camera with his right and snapped five more photos. Such was the nature of the café that no one took the slightest notice and Inspector Vasseur got on with the business of inspecting. Later he would look long and hard at super-enlarged copies of these photos, eventually detecting a passer-by’s sleight of hand that would intrigue him.

Excerpt from: the Poetry Book ‘Red Winds Howl’

chasing the tailwinds

 

 

when the insanity hits you and it’s your turn for the numbness

do you drift inside or outside the inner thunder, pole axed,

a brooding fixation caught in the headlights of total terror,

half thoughts struggling through the eyes of logic

missing segments of the dark puzzle

a rush of haggard interpretations

grappling with each other, whilst the blistered atoms

destroyed through lack of context

rap-sail constantly down your inner skull,

their random routes engraved in the bone