Shug’s Place

Welcome to a working-class Detroit of cops, private investigators, veterans, hustlers, criminals, and dangerous loyalties. At the center is Shug Barnes—and a circle of people who live by their own code on both sides of the law.

1 · Shug’s Place2 · Stories Not to Tell3 · Bad Time to Be in Love

Start with Book One ↓

Book One · Start Here

Shug’s Place: A Novel in Stories

Fiction · ISBN 978-0-58848-410-5 · 292 pages · Moonshine Review Press

Shug’s Place is a working-class bar in 1980s downtown Detroit with an interesting clientele: cops, hookers, PI’s, radicals, and a group of WW2 vets who take care of their own.

And Shug? He’s involved with two dangerous women—one he’d kill for, and one who might get him killed. Come sit at the bar, have a beer, and explore the dangerous avenues of one of the nation’s most storied cities.

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“I’d like to see this as a film! Shug’s Place and Bob Strother’s writing can handily fill the shoes of Robert B. Parker’s, if you’ve been missing Spenser recently. Shug and Spenser have much in common—both ‘men in full,’ they have strength combined with complexity, goodness, and a shot of ethical pragmatism.”— Elliott, Amazon Reviewer

Book Two

Stories Not to Tell

Fiction · ISBN 978-0-9743410-7-1 · 255 pages · Moonshine Review Press

Sequel to Shug’s Place.

When an Army buddy’s twelve-year-old daughter goes missing, Vietnam veteran Shug Barnes enlists a cadre of old friends and new acquaintances to track down the kidnappers. His newly formed posse, a unique mix of men and women on both sides of the law, go to great lengths to rescue the young girl—and still keep their own secrets intact. To do so, they will challenge a force seething with racial hatred, more insidious than Waco’s Koresh and just as lethal.

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“This book reminds us that, beneath the surface of a bland, homogenous, white-collar American landscape lies a rich, blue-collar, black market underbelly. Bankers and politicians walk the streets in broad daylight, but hustlers and grifters ply the darkness. Yet, in that darkness, an old school code of honor is at play, a code of honor that feels solid and reassuring in these uncertain times.”— Gary V. Powell, author of Men in Love

“A cast of the most unlikely characters come together in this action-packed crime thriller … colorful characters whose lives are intertwined in an unputdownable quest …”— Nancy McFarlane

A Shug Barnes Novella

Bad Time to Be in Love

Fiction / Novella · ISBN 978-1-7378828-4-8 · 164 pages · Moonshine Review Press

A Shug’s Place novella.

It’s the late ’90s, and Shug Barnes, now working with Rick Scanlon’s private detective agency, takes on the unsolved brutal murder of an Air National Guard sergeant. Faced with equally dangerous military and civilian suspects, Shug must determine who he can trust—maybe with his life. Meanwhile, the past threatens to reveal truths best left buried.

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“A thoroughly satisfying series finale. Visiting these characters again—and being pulled into another compelling mystery—feels like coming home to old friends.”— Anne M. Kaylor, Editor, moonShine review prose journal

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Burning Time Trilogy →Short Stories →About Bob →