Hotel California by Don Bruns

 

This anthology starts with a story by Andrew Child featuring his character, Reacher, and ends with the title story Hotel California by Jennifer Dornbush.  Other authors include Reed Farrell Coleman, Amanda Flowers, the editor Don Bruns, Heather Graham, Rick Bleiweiss, and John Gilstrap, a nice mixture of well known mystery writers and those less well known.  I listened to this anthology and each story had a different narrator which added to the enjoyment.

My favorite story was 'Try And Love Again' by Heather Graham.  It featured a private investigator who solves a cold case.  The beginning story which was the Reacher one was also enjoyable as he doles out justice to wife abusers and pedophiles.  All the stories have titles that are names of songs on the Eagles' famous album, Hotel California.  There are probably not many who lived through the 70's and 80's who couldn't sing that title song without thinking as it was one of the hits that exemplified a rock music era.  

The editor and author says that he got the idea after twenty years himself on the road, seeing the various hotels he stayed in, some great, some the best (and not very good) hotel a town had to offer.  Bruns is a musician and he would write songs about the people he observed and met on the road.  Now he is also an author and writes short stories about the same people and places.  Hotel California is the first of four anthologies he has written in this same genre.   This book is recommended for short story readers.