Long Chills & Case Dough
| Long Chills & Case Dough | |
|---|---|
| Released | December 2023 |
| Publisher | Dragonsteel Entertainment |
| ISBN | 978-1-938570-46-9 |
| Word Count | 10,047 |
Long Chills & Case Dough is a noir detective science fiction novelette by Brandon Sanderson. The story is told from the first-person perspective of Jack Darrens, an eccentric private detective who speaks and narrates in 1900s noir slang despite living in the twenty-second century.
Summary[edit]
In 2151, Jack gets a call from Camilla Ball, claiming she was framed for a mass shooting. She requests Jack's help, he accepts, and he and his secretary Alici Smith begin investigating.
Jack learns from Paisley, the chief of police, that the mob boss Don Lucrani was recently murdered. Jack refuses to help with that case and requests more information about the mass shooting. He learns that the perpetrator was confirmed to be Camilla through a brain scan, which only gets false matches this strong from family members of the same gender. Camilla had no known living female family members.
Alici does research of her own and discovers four other cases of similar mass killings in the past few years. Alici and Jack find that Camilla's grandmother Fran Wellington Ball looked nearly identical to Camilla before she died over a century prior. Alici theorizes that the behaviors of the five mass killers were the result of stasis sickness, a violent and paranoid insanity that happens a few years after awaking from a brain hibernation. Stasis sickness had destroyed the first space colony that used stasis for the expedition. Alici theorizes that Fran had undergone stasis instead of dying, and then later awoke to become the true killer. However, Fran was confirmed dead before stasis was invented, so Jack is skeptical of Alici's theory.
Jack and Alici then go to Big Harold's Sushi Bar. Harold claims that Camilla killed Lucrani. Mobsters show up and lock Jack and Alici in the fish locker. While contained, they research some more and learn that the Ball family was very successful, but began to have financial troubles starting with the death of Fran. A company called Insang handled both Fran's banking and her funeral. Jack also admits to Alici that he used to be in the police, and explains his reasons for leaving and for acting the way he does. Lucrani's successor, Don Rigallo, shows up and asks Jack where Camilla is. After Jack replies that they do not know, Rigallo lets them go.
Jack and Alici break into the building of Insang Trusts, which had recently gone out of business. There, they find Fran, and Jack and Fran battle with their various weapons and defensive countermeasures. Jack kills Fran, and they uncover the truth of Fran's revival. Fran's corpse was cryogenically frozen by Insang, with the agreement that she would be revived in the future when advancing technology made it possible. The freezing turned out to cause the same insanity as mind stasis.
Jack and Camilla talk again. Jack explains that Fran's money was tied up with Insang. If unclaimed for one hundred and twenty years, the money passes to the next of kin, Camilla. Jack also claims that Camilla herself did indeed kill Lucrani, thinking that he had her money, and Camilla confesses. Camilla then asks Jack to go with her and take a share of the money, but he refuses.
Development[edit]
The idea for this story began with a research paper for an undergraduate English course, which Sanderson presented as a noir detective story. A few years later, he used a version of essay's main character in a new story, this time set in the future, which became Long Chills & Case Dough.
In December 2023, the final box of the Year of Sanderson campaign included copies of Long Chills & Case Dough, published by Dragonsteel Entertainment as part of the Sanderson Curiosities series.