Jim Murray's Story Inventory

STORY INDEX

I have formatted my short stories in way that 

is easily readable on any device and have 

made them available for free. 

The stories are written more as elaborate 

screen treatments which 

makes them all a fairly quick read.

You can email me at onandup3@gmail.com

 and I will send you PDFs of whatever stories 

or collections you would like to read.

~~ SERIES/MINI-SERIES STORIES ~~~

LILLI’S LOST & FOUND

This is a novella that follows the life of Lilli Braithwaite from her college graduation to her life up to the age sixty-three. It’s a portrait of a writer’s life and how she grows into it. Along the way, she creates some innovative things, marries and stays married to a man who loves her unconditionally, becomes the mother of twins, gets involved for a very short time in a disruptive industrial terrorist movement, eventually becomes one of the more prominent environmental activists in the US, and finally becomes a key figure in the Federal government’s plan to ‘green’ the country. This is the story of a writer’s life with all its ups and downs.  (This is the first novella I have written, and I got a great deal of joy from the process.)

 THE VIRGIN DETECTIVE SERIES

1. THE RICHARD KANE CASE (Pilot)

Emil Haven IV genuinely dislikes being a Haven. He has spent most of his adult life doing  un-Haven-like things, yet still hoping to win  his industrialist father’s approval. A moderately successful writer of crime fiction, Emil decides that maybe his father would approve if he tackled a non-fiction story. In his quest to find a story, he stumbles across an organized crime caper that’s just what he was looking for. But it inevitably opens up a can of worms that Haven just might not be able to handle.

2.  THE ARONSON CASE

Contractor and multi-millionaire, Edward Furlong is being blackmailed for twenty million dollars. Through his connection with Emil Haven’s father, he becomes the first client for the fledgling Botticelli & Haven Investigations. But this case is a little more complex than they imagined, due to the strange relationships involved. This story also introduces a new regular character by the name of Wiley Dupree, an ex-American hacker. 

3. THE RED FRED 22 CASE 

A lawyer named Frederick Atwater, who has aspirations of being appointed a Supreme Court of Canada justice, hires Botticelli & Haven Investigations to ensure that no one hacks a site he created many years ago when he was a legendary hacker. The case is mostly in the hands of their cyber expert, Wiley Dupree. But when the Atwater site is hacked and the hackers are found murdered, it becomes a whole different kind of case, one that could easily turn out to be quite lethal for everyone at B&H Investigations.

4. THE INSIDER TRADING CASE

Haven’s father has asked Haven and his partner Gino to investigate a strange series of break-ins at houses on his street, The Bridal Path, which is some of the most expensive real estate in the city. Haven is too busy to work the case himself so he and Gino bring on a new investigator, a newly retired homicide cop named Phil Rosetti. They solve the case quite handily but as a result, it opens up a whole other situation, because the items being stolen were actually more illegal than the theft itself. 

5. THE BAD-ASS LADIES CASE

Haven and Gino are asked to investigate a case of embezzlement at one of Canada’s largest banks. It seems pretty straightforward at first until they actually start trying to locate the embezzler, one of the bank’s executives, and can’t seem to find him anywhere. But there are a couple of women, the wife and the mistress, who quickly become persons of interest in the case. It’s a whole lot of educated guesswork until it isn’t. And Haven and Gino follow the crumbs religiously right into the USA.

6. THE SHOP & GO CASE

Somebody is robbing the Shop & Go Variety stores on the east side of the city. The perps are dressed in black and are wearing Hollywood movie star masks. The only clue that pops up is that the perps always seem to know the absolute best times to stage their robberies. Through some slick ingenuity from their computer guy, Wiley, and an old friend of his who is a security systems genius, they set a trap for the perps, hopefully to find out exactly who they are. 

~~~~~~~~~~~

THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES

(A Blue Fin Consulting Story)

This is the story of the Blue Fin Consulting Group, A black bag and assassination 

group run by a former Deputy Director of the NSA, Phillip Ross. Their primary 

mission is to keep the Democratic party in power in the United States by any
means necessary. It’s broken down into six separate parts, (as it was designed as a mini-series with a longer pilot and shorter episodes) involving the recruitment of four different
marksmen, each with different targets. The group’s main challenge is keeping
one step ahead of a tenacious FBI major crimes team investigating the assassinations. 

This is a story about what would happen if the Democrats decided to fight back against the
ever-growing scourge of right-wing extremism in America and how that could manifest.

  

OUTLAWS

Danny Freeman, a break-and-enter thief by trade, was leaving a failed relationship in New Mexico, when he picked up young Jonah White who was heading to Las Vegas to play poker.  Along the way, Jonah revealed and proved to Danny that he had had for a number of years the ability to hear what people were thinking. After using his talent to methodically win millions in Vegas poker games, Danny and Jonah headed to California where they were determined to learn to surf. One day, a few months later, Jonah picked up a young lady named Ellie Dornan, who as Jonah and Danny eventually found out, had come to Los Angeles to hunt for her sister, Gracie, who had come to LA to be an actress but had suddenly dropped off Ellie’s radar. This is the story of how Danny and Jonah go about finding Gracie, which was Jonah’s way of putting his special gift to good use other than winning at poker.

THE FERLINGHETTI TWINS

The Ferlinghetti twins, Jenna and Jacob, have been groomed by their dad to take over the family ocean freight business based in Miami. But after the first year of managing the business on their own, they become quite bored because the business is so well run that they have very little to do. Around this time, Jenna meets an old high school classmate named North, who is an aspiring songwriter and singer. As their relationship develops, Jenna and Jacob become interested in starting a music company with capital they had inherited from their grandfather. They want David to be their first artist. David lives with his brother Donnie, who with his friend Raul Vega, is wholesaling Mexican weed up and down the Florida coast. This is the story of how David grows into a recording artist, with help from his girlfriend and her brother and a local music producer and studio owner, Zack Jamison, who has the best way for David to be packaged for success. The story includes lyrics for the songs on David’s first album. 

JAKOB THE TERRORIST

Jakob Franklin, as a result of his father's illness, has taken the reins at Franklin Industries a multi-faceted manufacturing operation in Pittsburgh. After his father passed away and left the business to Jakob and his sister, he also left a dying wish. The wish led him to a man named Joe Butler, who had been working for Jakob’s father on a device that would sabotage industrial robots and send a signal to the tech industry that it was moving too fast and taking too many people out of the workforce. Together, Jakob and Joe Butler set about on a focused program of industrial sabotage. This activity soon attracts the attention of FBI Special Agent Robin Pierce, who throws a bit of a monkey wrench into the gears. Jakob is risking his future doing what his father wished for. How much actual damage they can do is something neither man can know for sure.

INTO THE HEAT

Bobby Granger, one of the US Special Forces’ sharpshooters, thought he was finished with that life. After his military career ended, he was working as high end fashion photographer in New York. But one day Bobby’s past caught up with him. An old associate needed him to photograph an illicit arms deal taking place in the Bahamas. Bobby doesn’t realize it at the time but saying yes to the job will introduce him to a strange new world and the woman of his dreams.

TED’S MILLIONS

Ted Phillips was a senior accountant in a blue-chip firm in New York. But he was quite unhappy with his life and his career and was starting to hate the city. One day, for some strange reason, he bought a Powerball lottery ticket. Three days later his life changed dramatically. It was goodbye NYC, Hello Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with more than seven hundred million dollars in the bank. But he also left with the idea to send a message to some of the more greedy clients he had worked with over the years. With the help of a new friend, he might be able to achieve that. But his overriding challenge was to simply to make the kind of life he wanted and figure out what the hell to do with all that money. 

SENOR MICKEY FARRELL

Mickey Farrell, was a high school graduate, wannabe writer and a pretty good auto mechanic from Madison Wisconsin who was out to see America and gain some life experience that would help make him a better writer, which is his real passion. In central California he helps out an older man stranded with car trouble and ends up working for him on his massive grape and fruit-growing property. He eventually falls in love with the old man’s granddaughter, becomes part of the family, and soon finds out that he has to grow up much faster than he ever imagined he would. 

THE PASSION OF JOHNNY VALLONE

Johnny Vallone is a writer for a crime story publication and a would-be novelist. Through a cousin of his, he wangles an invitation to a drug party where he meets and is very attracted to the dealer’s woman. She is attracted to Johnny as well, because she is trapped in a loveless relationship with the dealer. Together they work out a plan to get her free from him. But Johnny has never done anything quite like this before, and the last thing he wants to do is mess it up, because that would mean certain death for both of them.

BLIND SIDE OF THE HEART

Tony Shaw, a famous mystery writer, was blinded in a car accident. Today, he is just starting to turn the corner off self-pity street, with the help of his wife Olivia and a young friend. But things get complicated when Tony starts investigating the life of a mysterious new neighbour. If he doesn’t do the right thing, it could cost him his marriage and his life. A lot to ask of a blind man.

THE LOCKER KEY 

Jake Morrison is a well-known syndicated newspaper TV review columnist and a radio personality for an ‘all-guy’ station and likes his life just fine. But Jake has no idea what he’s stepped in when he meets up with an old school friend who gives him a locker key to hold for him and it very quickly turns his whole life upside down. Because the contents of the locker is something that can make whoever owns it extremely powerful. And Jake is just a regular guy who is standing in the way of all that. But with a little help from a new friend, he can get through this mess. He hopes.

AKA CHARLIE MCQUEEN 

Charlie McQueen, a mathematical genius and sports gambler, is on the run from a mobster he used to work for in New York. He settles down in a small town in Maine and starts an online sports book there. Everything is going fine until one day, someone shows up looking for him, leaving Charlie with just two options: either pack up and run or, with 

the help of a good friend, get the issue resolved once and for all and get his life back.

BECOMING PHILLIPE FORNIER

Jason Whiteside was looking for a way to escape the inevitability of taking over the family businesses, to decide what he wanted to do with his own life. After getting a degree in business from MIT, and with the help of a good friend, he ends up in Switzerland with a new identity and enough money to live comfortably. After a lot of thinking, he decides to start writing a story. This is something he has never tried before, but he feels pretty strongly that it could just be the thing he is looking for. This is written in a ‘story within a story’ format. So there are actually two stories going on. How things will turn out for Jason, now Phillipe Fornier, will all depend on whether he is a real writer or not.

JULIET’S GIFT 

Juliet (Jules) Deacon has a gift. She has the intuitive ability to unlock things. Whether it’s a school locker, a password-protected bank account or almost anything in between. Jules discovered this talent very early on, and kept it to herself until, in her early twenties, she falls in love and eventually teams up with Travis Dupree, a young thief working with an art dealer in New Orleans, breaking into the homes of very wealthy private art collectors. Jules and Travis started out simply working to get rich and have a good life with each other. But as they travel that road together, they realize that Jules’ gift is worth much more than they ever imagined.

THE MIKALOV CASE
Dale Hogan, a US State Department operative, has blown a major assignment. He had been assigned to safely move a Russian defector, a  scientist named Anatoly Mikalov, to Washington for debriefing, in return for political asylum. But something goes very wrong and Dale, with help from his dad, Jim, a former State Department agent himself, has a strange mystery to solve in order to both salvage his freedom and preserve the balance of power in the world.

FRANKIE CARLINO'S LEGACY 

Frankie Carlino, a retired hitman for a Chicago crime family, is well hidden in the witness protection program, in New Haven Connecticut. One day he gets an idea for a legacy project and hires a young writer named Ryan Bixby to help him. But there are a few things he needs to take care of at the same time. Including holding onto the money he stole from his former employer, a finder who is on his trail and a crooked US Marshall who knows exactly where to find him.

MAXWELL’S SILVER HAMMER

PART 1 Parker Nash and Victoria Desmond have been drawn together as the result of a mass shooting that claimed the lives of both their parents. Parker is a gifted computer genius, Victoria, or Tori as she prefers to be called, is a young writer. Together they devise a plan to seek retribution for their parents’ deaths and finally bring about some much-needed gun control legislation in the US. This story is how they go about achieving this.

PART 2 Having achieved a good deal of success in persuading the major weapons manufacturers to remove semi-automatic weapons from domestic markets, Parker and Victoria set their sights on a new target, the radical Republicans in Congress, who are doing their best to undermine the government. This time Parker has something new in mind, which he hopes will do the job. If not they always have their tried and true formula to fall back on. All the while FBI Cybercrimes Inspector Robin Pierce is starting to put things together from her end. This time, the pressure is coming from very high places.

WHEN I’M SIXTY FOUR

Joe Maughn is a retired copywriter who needs spinal surgery for an E-Coli infection. After his surgery, he starts to notice a real change in his behaviour. He starts having vivid dreams and writing them out into three novels and one screenplay. Through an advertising buddy who was writing mysteries, he gets introduced to an agent/publisher who just loves his work. So at sixty-three, Joe is suddenly starting a second career, one which pays a lot more than his former one. The only thing that’s bothering Joe is just exactly where all these stories are coming from.  

THE BROTHERS BOTTICELLI
The three Botticelli brothers Harry, Angelo and Lou, are anything but private eyes. But when their dad’s final wish was to find and punish whoever killed him, they really have no choice. The cops think it was nothing but a tragic accident, but the brothers know better. So they team up to figure it out. As the pieces of the puzzle come together, they start to see that there is something dark at work here, quite literally a blast from the past.

 A LITTLE RAY OF HOPE

Phillip Winslow and Jenny Stone met each other quite by chance at a Starbucks in Toronto. Phil, who is independently wealthy, had been drifting around after university trying to figure out what to do with his life. Jenny was a singer, working mostly in the advertising business. Phil was very rich, Jenny not so much. But they were attracted to each other. Over time they came to understand that Phil was really interested in becoming a lyric writer or poet and Jenny a songwriter and singer. This is the story of how this all came together and turned into a reality for both of them, with a few bumps along the way. 

THE AMANDA PROJECT

Jeremy Sand has an AI project, called Amanda, that he designed and used to get his Master’s degree at MIT. Jeremy’s dad, Jordan, is an industrial spy with enough capital to fund the final development of his son’s AI program. Jeremy had his pick of blue-chip digital companies to work for but instead chose to work with his dad, secretly determined to get him out of the criminal world and get his AI program launched successfully.

HURRICANE SEASON

Ryan Gamble had a great 10-year run at the top of the album charts and on the concert stage, which made him very wealthy. But he was sidelined by inoperable nodes, which brought his performing career to a standstill. After a year and a half of isolation, he decided to pay it forward and develop a new singer that he had heard about from one of the guys in his band. This is the story of how he goes about doing this, and how the project almost got derailed just as it was getting started. 

THE HUMAN LEAGUE

Recent MIT grads, Terry Moorehouse and Shawna Lennox are working to take Terry’s family marketing business, located in Plymouth Mass. into the AI world. They have a lot in common with each other, including a deep concern about the negative effect that unrestricted and unregulated AI is going to have on the world. And together they are determined to do something about it. The Human League is the company they form. It's dedicated to finding ways to keep AI from wreaking havoc on the world.
And with a little help from some very important people, they just might pull it off.

   As Terry and Shawna are preparing to leave for DC to show their AI fake detection software to a special Congressional Committee on Cybercrime, Terry is asked to

investigate a cybercrime being perpetrated on a daughter of a wealthy businessman in Stamford Connecticut. This leads Terry on a mission to stop the extortion, which is not exactly what he signed on for, but something he is more than willing to do with the help of his partner in Plymouth.

DEACON LOVES PENNY
Deacon Fredericks is 22 years old and a US Marine veteran, who has just moved to Virginia Beach and is waiting for his 23rd birthday when he will inherit more seven million dollars that was left to him in his grandmother’s will. One day, he meets a girl named Penny Jones, who is a recent Virginia Tech graduate with a big AI idea. All she needs is about five million dollars to actualize it. After she explains it to Deacon, he decides to partner up with her and help her get her idea developed. This is a story about two smart young people who work their way to the top of the AI business in a short period, all of which was made possible by Deacon’s millions.