Recommendation by Chris Steib on BAFAB
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Flash fiction, they say, is a phenomenon simply for the internet. Maxwell would beg to differ here in his collection of stories, each of which fall into the short-short (and sometimes short-short-short) fiction category. Founded on the author’s adept knowledge of ,and love for, the noir/crime genre, Monkey is the perfect Chandler-esque hard-boiled cocktail, stirred with equal parts humor, mystery, gut-wrenching realism, and trademark minimalism. Maxwell is a unique storyteller with a hell of an imagination, and his knack for setting up punch lines (“Even as I pressed the start button on the microwave I should have known it would end in disaster”) makes this a fast and fun debut. Whereas many writers use the short-short story as a crutch, being too lazy to throw down 5,000 words, Maxwell is able to deliver the full flavor of a story in tiny, bite-sized morsels. It may be flash fiction, but the joy left in this reader’s heart after the last page was anything but fleeting.
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