Sometimes "Is" Isn't

by Jim Newell

Identical twins can cause all kinds of difficulty when someone is attempting to decide who is who, not only when both are alive but also when one has died. Which one has died? How do you prove it? It gets even worse when somebody is charged with murdering the one who died. Did he kill the one that everyone thought he killed? What if he didn't murder either one? Sometimes "is" just plain isn't! See if you can figure out who died and who killed him in this short story by the author of the crime collection NEVER USE A CHICKEN AND OTHER STORIES.

14 pages, ebook

First published June 25, 2011

About the author

Jim Newell is a Canadian writer who has been had careers as a broadcaster, air force officer, high school teacher, four time major award winner for column and editorial writing as a journalist and editor, columnist and feature writer for both a secular newspaper and Christian magazines. He has authored five books: two of them Christian novels, one a baseball novel, a collection of 80 daily meditations and an ebook collection of 14 short stories. Another ebook baseball novel is in the publishing process. His career has spanned more than 50 years of publishing. Since 1991 he has been confined largely to a wheelchair with Post-Polio Syndrome.

He was born in Maine, grew up and was educated in Nova Scotia, and has lived in many parts of Canada. He now lives in Waterloo, Ontario with his wife of more than 58 years and their six month old kitten, and where three of his four grown children and two granddaughters also live and work.

Reviews

[A Book Vacation · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very interesting novelette dwelling on a case of mistaken identity. It takes place in a courtroom, opening right up into the action and pushing all background information aside, which the reader later gleans from the story as it unfolds. It’s one of those stories where the reader can’t help but route for the defendant and feel triumphant as the defense lawyer wipes the floor with the prosecutor and, in this case, the sheriff as well. It’s hard to pinpoint the time in which the story takes place, leaving it all up to the readers’ imagination. For me, though, I’m thinking it’s the mid 1950s based on some of the evidence, but I could be wrong. Read it and find out...

To read my full review (12/27):

http://bookvacations.wordpress.com/20...