Good Guys Bad Guys and Other Guys

By Ralph Filicchia

Welcome to the first ever book of Christian "pulp" fiction--78 short stories from the world we presently live in; a world with its scars and headaches, and characters experiencing fear, guilt, revenge, despair, temptation, betrayal, remorse, death, etc. Stories about the imperfect among us lived out in the lives of cab drivers, hardhats, cops, nurses, gangsters, alcoholics, loan sharks, a Nazi general, a hit man, soldiers, burglars, fighters, and others we find in our newspapers and TV news. In this book you will not find Sunday school lessons dressed up to look like a short story, nor will you find Amish romances, C.S. Lewis fantasy, end times adventures, or anything else that resembles the "usual" Christian fiction found in most Christian bookstores. The stories in this book are not meant to teach anyone a lesson, but to give the reader (hopefully) an emotional experience, as that is the main purpose of all fiction. When you read opening sentences like "lightning clawed the black sky like the gnarled fingers of an angry god," and "Donlan's face looked as if it had been used as a punching bag by someone with cement fists," and story titles like "Death Drives a Cadillac." you know you are entering something new in the world of Christian fiction that might not fit the usual formulas. Example: In the story "The Hit Man" the gunman in the diner, dying of cancer, after hearing the street preacher in the booth behind him talking to a kid about the wicked going to Hell, struggles with a decision to shoot or not to shoot the opposing gang boss seated a few booths in front of him. He finally decides to abort the hit...but too late, and ends up being the victim instead of the assassin. This story is tense and comes to a solid conclusion, but is there any kind of message here? No, there is not. But the reader cannot help but feel pity on the Hit Man as he is now dying on the floor of the diner struggling to explain to the preacher that he was not going to kill, but then breathing his last after just a few disconnected words. This story is an incident in time that still contains a beginning, a middle, and a conclusion, that teaches no lesson or real moral point, but that does draw the reader into an emotional kinship with the gunman's problems, the cancerous pain in his gut, and then his death. In this sense the story is a success even if the reader does not learn anything from the events. He wasn't supposed to. He "felt" something instead. The Christians in these storied may not always do the right thing, but then--neither do you!

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 147005826X
• ISBN13: 9781470058265
• Release Date: February 2012
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 404 Pages
• Weight: 1.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.9" x 5.5"