High Side by Jaime Oliveira
Thursday, September 24, 2026 at 10:47AM 
Published by Amazon Original Stories on September 29, 2026
Motorcycle enthusiasts who want to make time for a short story might be attracted to “High Side.” I don’t know if this nonsensical tale of motorcyclists robbing banks will appeal to any other audience.
Billy Miller raced motorcycles until he had a high side crash (“That’s when your rear tire slips, hooks, and launches you over the bars like a slingshot.”). The crash ended his racing career. He went to work as a mechanic in his father’s garage. His father died but Billy is still there.
Billy’s older brother Cole left home because he “stopped winning races” and “Dad stopped being a dad. At least to Cole.” Now Cole is back. He’s “putting together a crew” to rob banks in the southwest. Their scheme is to hit banks in small counties where police departments have no helicopters. Cole figures they can outrun police cars on their high-speed bikes. A tractor-trailer will haul the bikes from job to job so they can’t be identified on the open road.
And that’s the story. Cole and Billy and a crew of barely described criminals rob some banks. Two women are part of the crew so Billy naturally gets involved with one of them. Near the story’s end, a job — the inevitable “big score” — goes wrong. Will Billy escape? What about Cole? Or Billy’s new squeeze? The real question is whether, in such a threadbare story, a reader will care.
The plot takes its only twist when the reader learns that one of the crew is an informant. The informant reports to Lennox, an FBI agent with all the personality of a soggy tea bag. The informant's identity will likely be obvious to the reader. Billy discovers that one of his crew members is working for the FBI but inexplicably proceeds with the heist anyway. That makes zero sense, but logic plays no part in the story.
“High Side” is supposedly “in development as a blockbuster film at Paramount Pictures.” Well, okay, it has gun battles and explosions and cheesy romance so it might make a ton of money. It would have to be better than the story, which I suppose was originally written as a treatment for the film. It still reads that way — the bones of the story are there, but they are covered with little flesh. Given the absence of well-rounded characters, the predictable plot, and the sloppy storytelling, I can’t think of a reason for crime fiction fans to read “High Side.”
NOT RECOMMENDED