This week we review Everything on Black by F.T. Grant from Vigilante Crime & Pulp
Kat is a sheriff’s deputy in Illinois, widowed young, drinking alone, selling case tips to a sleazy lawyer to feed the online gambling habit. She answers a domestic disturbance call, and the husband who opens the door (freshly beaten) hits on her while she takes his statement. He’s warm, glib, always checking whether the joke landed. By the quarter mark this homme fatale has talked Kat into murdering his wife for the insurance money.
Kat gets inside the house, learns that everything he told her about the woman was a lie, and kills her anyway. And that’s act one.
We went in braced for Lady Cop fiction: girlboss Sherlock on one flank, the gun guy’s fantasy action Barbie on the other. Instead, Kat is competent, somewhat crooked, and realistically female. The setting also isn’t nostalgia-bait bullshit; it’s drywall, Starbucks, 5-Hour Energy. And under the pulp sits an actual theology with a father where God should be versus a tarot-reading witch in a trailer park.
The 13th Grade: “The author owes me a night of sleep.”
Daniel M. Bensen: “I quit Twitter for a week because the book was more interesting.”
In 2026, there is no higher praise.
Next time, we’ll discuss Scenebux by Cairo Smith from New Ritual Press. Check it out.
