Damage Control

Lou, a renegade cop, stands on a deserted winter beach trying to summon the courage to bash his own head in with a rock as a way of covering up a murder. Cheryl, a bartender, fends off a request that she kill her best friend's husband. Bernard, a young college graduate, struggles to overcome the guilt of having caused somebody's death. These are the wounded and the confused, the maladjusted and the malevolent. These are just some of the people in "Damage Control," a collection of short stories by Frank Diamond, a columnist with the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. These stories focus on the rough edges of human connectedness, as characters struggle to make the best of troubled circumstances that they helped to create.