A Grifter’s Song is a novella anthology series created and edited by Frank Zafiro and published by Down and Out Books. It begins with The Concrete Smile, which was a finalist for the 2020 Derringer Award, and continues for five seasons and thirty-five episodes.
The series features a pair of grifters, Sam and Rachel, who are lifelong grifters in their late thirties. Their past is as shadowy as their present, but we know that they pulled a major long con on the mafia in Philadelphia, and now they are on the run. While one or the other may speak longingly of that quiet life in a beach house somewhere at the end of the rainbow, we all know that the likelihood is that they will never leave this life, unless it is in a box. They are who they are, and so they continue to find and exploit marks, trying to stay one step ahead of the mobsters bent on vengeance.
Each episode is a standalone story but is also part of the meta tale that evolves over the course of the series. The first (and a few others) is written by Frank Zafiro, with a cast of other authors contributing to remainder of the series.
The novellas take place all over the United States, and each story features a different con that Sam and Rachel work in their attempt to make enough money to stay one step ahead of the mobsters who want to kill them.
The episodes are released monthly, starting in January and continuing through July. You can buy them individually, or buy the box set of each season. Paperback options are also available.
Seasons of A Grifter’s Song:
*If you’d like to hear a retrospective on the entire series, featuring commentary from the authors who wrote eache episode, check out my podcast, Wrong Place, Write Crime.
**If you’d like to get the inside scoop on the backstory of how this came to be, I wrote an article for ITW about it.
A Grifter’s Song was named as one of the best TRULY independent titles of 2022!