Odds, Ends, and Other Adventures

This is a collection that knows exactly who it is for: readers who want a story with a clear shape, a clear feeling, and a payoff. Brandt moves comfortably across twenty-five stories and a dozen genres without losing that contract. The comic stories commit fully. In "The Cereal Killer," Detective Spooner eats a bowl of cereal at every crime scene "to defend the victims by proxy," and the accountant-vigilante Brandon McGuffey, sentenced to teach nutrition in Captain Crunch's too-small admiral coat, is a perfectly judged joke. "Mullet Man vs. The Revenuer" earns its Alabama tall-tale register line by line, down to the sign banning "SOLICITORS, REVENUERS, OR JEHOVAH'S WITNESSES AFTER DARK." The thrillers and speculative pieces are structurally tidy: "The Scapegoat" plants its clues in a dead man's desk drawer, and "The Watch of Consequence" closes its time loop with real nerve.

The emotional high point is "I'm a Good Dog," narrated by a service dog who learns that witness, not intervention, is what the gray days require. The closing turn, "We are, both of us, found," lands cleanly. "What the Fire Remembers" and "The Long Ride Home" treat recovery honestly, with Danny walking a bag of drugs to the security desk rather than past it, and Marcus insisting the cooking is "not a cure, but a tool." "Justin and Snagglepaws" captures a sensory-sensitive child's bedtime with unusual tenderness. The prose can lean toward the declarative and sentimental, but the book's range, warmth, and craft in building to its endings make it a genuinely enjoyable, readable collection.