Mark McNease's Fearsome Fiction Podcast Extra: Fatal Mistake - A Harry Hell Novella (Chapters 1 - 10)

In addition to my weekly 3-chapter installments of 'Night Flight to Murder Town: A Harry Hell Novella,' I'm offering up three extra-long listens of 'Fatal Mistake: A Harry Hell Novella.' It's the first of three novellas planned that take us on the wild journey that is Harry Hell's life. Queer, dystopian, fearsome.

Fatal Mistake opens in a dying, collapsed world — a ruined island city divided between the fortified enclave of Eastward, where the privileged few cling to order, and the brutal wastelands outside its walls: the Ruins and the Slopes, where survival is the only law.

Two storylines run in parallel. In the present, we meet Harry Hell — a former elite assassin who has spent five years hunting the most dangerous woman alive: a killer known only as Nectar. The story begins with her turning the tables on two of his men sent to find her, slitting one's throat and sending the other back with a message. Harry is cold, purposeful, and consumed by a single obsession — avenging the death of Raul, his partner and the only person he ever loved, who Nectar killed.

By the end of chapter ten, the two worlds are on a collision course neither can escape — and we understand that what's coming isn't just a fight to the death. It's the only ending two people like this were ever going to have.