At last week's Windycon, I bought The Big Dash from Eggplant Literary Productions. Eggplant is a small e-press, which until recently was focused on novellas. (They just opened to novels.)
The Big Dash is one of their novellas, and is hard-boiled SF. It's the kind of story where a character will say something like "he tried to play some chin music in the key of Me-flat" and deliver said line with (presumably) a straight face. The story is narrated by Jaxon Test, security chief on the FTL ship Arrow. He's a standard hard-boiled "ship's dick" and is nominally on a milk run, which includes escorting the daughter of a major shareholder of the ship's company. (She and her father are both aliens, by the way.)
Of course, the milk run proves to be anything but, which is what makes the story entertaining. The science portion of the story is pretty light - FTL just works and trips between stars are a matter of days - but the entertainment value is high.
I personally found The Big Dash very enjoyable.
8/10
