FREE Halloween Mystery: The Needle In the Candy Stack
This Halloween, I'm giving away a free short story featuring ex-cop turned private detective Frank Leland. Some friends challenged me to write a complete Halloween mystery in under 5,000 words and I couldn't resist.
THE NEEDLE IN THE CANDY STACK is set during Halloween 1977 in Manhattan, when someone starts poisoning children's trick-or-treat candy. Three kids are dead. Seventeen more are in hospitals. Frank is out with his five-year-old daughter when he realizes they may have visited the killer's house. Now he's racing against time to identify the poisoner before Lisa eats the wrong piece of candy.
Every Halloween, the streets are filled with monsters. But this year, one of them is real.
Needle is a fast-paced psychological mystery based on the real Halloween candy scares of the 1970s—the "razor blades in apples" panic that terrified parents across America.
Download the FREE story here 👉 EPUB or here 👉PDF
And if you like Frank, mark your calendar: November 6-10. You’re find my full-length noir mystery WORKING STIFF: A Frank Leland Mystery will be FREE on Kindle for five days only.
Happy Halloween reading.
Why I Wrote a Halloween Mystery About Poison Candy
I grew up in the 1950s and 60s, when Halloween meant freedom. We'd roam the neighborhood for hours, hit every house, come home with pillowcases full of candy. Our parents would do a quick check—look for anything obviously tampered with—and then we'd gorge ourselves.
But in the 70s, everything changed. An eight-year-old boy in Texas died after eating poisoned Halloween candy in 1974. The story spread like wildfire. Suddenly every parent was terrified. Hospitals offered to X-ray candy. Newspapers printed warnings. The fear was everywhere.
Later, we learned the boy's own father had poisoned him for insurance money and tried to make it look like a random Halloween attack. But by then, the damage was done. Halloween would never feel quite as innocent again.)
That panic—that moment when childhood freedom collided with adult fear—stuck with me.
I wanted to capture that specific 1970s atmosphere—the fog machines and elaborate decorations, the Star Wars costumes everywhere, the sense that danger could be hiding behind any friendly smile. And I wanted to explore obsession: how grief can fester over decades, how our own struggles can sometimes save us.
And if you like Frank Leland, mark your calendar: November 6-10. That’s when my full-length noir mystery, WORKING STIFF, will be FREE on Kindle. Think of it as a two-week reading event. Start with the appetizer this week. Come back later for the main course.
Happy Halloween reading. And check your candy.