No Comebacks

No Comebacks

First edition
Author Frederick Forsyth
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre Crime short stories
Publisher Hutchinson
Publication date
 1982
Media type Print (hardback & paperback)
Pages 256
ISBN 0-09-147870-7

No Comebacks is a 1982 collection of ten short stories by Frederick Forsyth. Each story takes place in a different setting and ends with a plot twist. Several of them involve a central male character without any apparent strength who is put under pressure, but who does not give in.

Penthouse Magazine reviewed the collection by saying: "Quite possibly the most entertaining collection of short stories currently making the rounds." [1]

List of stories and plots

The stories in the collection are:

A wealthy Englishman who can have anything he wants, finally encounters a woman he wants but can't have. The desired Spaniard is married to a husband who needs her so long as he's alive. But for a man with money and no scruples, there's an obvious fix for that. He hires a foreign hit-man to travel to Southern Spain and overcome the obstacle with an unforeseen outcome.[2]
A Punjabi medical student takes a job on a tough Irish wrecking crew for money, and is mistreated by a racist boss. His revenge is so complex that something is bound to go wrong with it.
In this homage to Hemingway, an ineffectual tourist named Murgatroyd (instead of Macomber) battles a monster blue marlin, and finds something besides pain.
A hapless crew of Irish trucking hijackers finds themselves with an odiferous load of rose fertilizer instead of fine brandy. But their troubles have only begun.
A meek senior insurance company officer finds himself being neatly blackmailed regarding the first sexual misadventure of his life. Surely he has no choice but to pay...
A man's fight against eviction from the condemned house where he has lived alone since his wife disappeared 15 years before, becomes more understandable when the mummified cadaver of a woman is found bricked up between the wall and chimney breast of his fireplace. In such an open-and-shut case, why won't he even say a word?
When a businessman finds himself libeled by a careless journalist, it seems there's little he can do about it that won't bankrupt him. If only the law in such matters had any part that was equitable to all.
A couple vacationing in France in the 1950's finds a ghost of Irish history.
Mr. Timothy Hanson is a self-made man with a terminal cancer. If he hates his only surviving relative as much as he hates the death tax, why does his last will specify that the woman and her husband get his entire estate, if only both of them will personally push the lead coffin containing Hanson's body, off a boat into the deep waters of the Atlantic?
In the unsophisticated world of 1938, a deck of marked cards used in a game of poker on a train might be just what it seems, or not.

Other short stories by the same author

Forsyth has written another collection of short stories, The Veteran.

References

  1. ↑ No Comebacks Bantam Books edition, 1988. ISBN 0-553-27673-5. Inside blurb.
  2. ↑ "No Comebacks Quiz" (PDF). Macmillan Readers. Retrieved 26 December 2012.
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