'Great Filling Station Holdup' review: Inspired by Jimmy Buffett songs

"The Great Filling Station Holdup" features 16 short songs inspired by Jimmy Buffett songs. Credit: Down & Out Books/TNS
THE GREAT FILLING STATION HOLDUP: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Jimmy Buffett edited by Josh Pachter (Down & Out Books, 274 pp., $16.95)
Wasting away in Margaritaville takes on a new meaning in "The Great Filling Station Holdup," a tidy collection of 16 short stories takes its title from the Buffett song that inspired it.
Go find that lost shaker of salt, then delve into each story. You might want to have Buffett’s music in the background to enhance the experience. A handy guide gives the authors’ biographies and credentials.
An airstrip in the Bahamas, a Key West bar and a father’s revenge converge nicely in "A Pirate Looks at Forty" by Rick Ollerman. The closing of the auto parts store Vincent Fowler manages in Iowa will put 25 people, including him, out of work in Elaine Viets’ amusing "We Are the People Our Parents Warned Us About." Vincent, who has a bit of larceny in his heart, and his wife move to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where they find a different kind of paradise.
Also set in Iowa, Don Bruns’ "Cheeseburger in Paradise" revolves around hit man Ginger Gallagher, who can’t resist those cheeseburgers, even though he has a job to do.
Editor Josh Pachter’s vision of "The Great Filling Station Holdup" is a nifty look at solving a crime that satisfies everyone involved — even the robbers.CEO Dick Jeffries needs all the good publicity his team can muster to repair his "kindly-grandfather image" in the humorous "Public Relations," by Neil Plakcy.
Peter "Einstein" Calihan is an expert on the waves until the unthinkable happens in the profound revenge tale "Einstein Was a Surfer," by M.E. Browning.
In addition to being a musician, Buffett is known for his activism in ecological causes. Making the book even more enjoyable is knowing that a third of the royalties from the collection’s sales will be divided between two of his pet charities — Save the Manatee Club and Singing for Change.
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