Haftmann's Rules (Thomas Haftmann, Book 5) by Robb White
Release date: February 12, 2020
Subgenre: Hardboiled mystery, Private investigator
About Haftmann's Rules:
It was another kiddie hunt. Ex-cop Thomas Haftmann is a private
investigator in the resort town of Jefferson-on-the-Lake. What do you
want me to do?” he asked the man sitting across the desk from him. “I
want you to find her and bring her home,” he replied.” Haftmann
countered “I have to ask this, you understand. What if she’s dead?” The
answer: “Then tell me where she’s buried so I can bring her home.” Thus
Haftmann faces another case, another venture into that dark world of
murder and madness.
Excerpt:
PART 1
Suffering is a fact of life; suffering is
caused by attachment. –The First and Second Noble Truths of Buddhism
I felt the father’s eyes watching me as I
read. He said his name was John O’Reilly.
It was hard to concentrate. Twenty minutes earlier I was staring at the
hand-drawn lettering of my name, Thomas Haftmann, Private Investigator, across
the plate glass of my office window and trying hard not to reach for the gun in
my drawer. The man I hired to paint it was one of the Strip’s local characters.
He always gave the impression of having a mild buzz on. We were sitting at the
bar in Tico’s Place reminiscing about last year’s riot, the one when two
motorcycle gangs had decided to fight for ownership of our crappy little resort
town. Downing the last of however many boilermakers before I got there, he drew
my name in handsome letters with a few lavish strokes across a bar napkin. I
was so impressed I hired him on the spot. Now I wondered what happened to those
impressive curlicues and bold dagger-like stems of letters in the smeared
scrawl I was literally faced with every time I looked up from my desk. He had
smudged the last two n’s of my surname so that it looked like a child’s attempt
with a fat crayon. I didn’t know what to
make of the clipping Mr. O’Reilly handed me after introducing himself so I read
it again. Below the photo of a dark-eyed, attractive girl I read this:
Cruel Court, you are the enemy of truth,
justice, of innocent life. You are the enemy of God. Cruel Court, your morality
is that of the abortion provider who rips and tears head and heart from the
innocent to comfort the powerful and selfish. Cruel Court, for years you have
inched us, child and father, toward the precipice . . .
I
could hear the rumbling of suppressed sobs in his throat, waiting for me to
finish so that he could talk, but I kept my eyes fixed to the clipping.
I heard him blowing his nose loudly into a
Kleenex. There was even more maudlin whining in bad prose after this, so I cut
my eyes to the end to see if it was going to make any sense.
... the daughter who knew too much and was
too honest and unselfish had to disappear, didn’t she? You sent Annaliese
reeling toward the precipice. She fell over the edge, didn’t she? Or was she
pushed? Her sad and lonely grave is another one of your client’s dark secrets,
isn’t it? Annaliese – the infant with haunting eyes, knowing eyes; the child
with quick hand and mind and kind and generous spirit; the young woman full of
promise. The Human Sacrifice to Corruption. Loved, and at last, mourned by her
father.
The
paper had appended his name, John O’Reilly, in italic script at the bottom. Fuckola,
I thought, just another kiddie hunt.
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About Robb White:
Robb White lives in Northeastern Ohio. He has published several
crime, noir, and hardboiled novels and published crime, horror, and
mainstream stories in various magazines and anthologies. He’s been
nominated for a Derringer. “Inside Man,” a crime story, was
selected for Best American Mystery Stories 2019. His new hardboiled series features private-eye Raimo Jarvi Northtown Eclipse (Fahrenheit Press, 2018). Murder, Mayhem and More cited When You Run with Wolves as a finalist for its Top Ten Crime Books of 2018.
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