S.E. Schenkel The Hobo Chronicles

The Hobo Chronicles

S.E. Schenkel

Wings ePress, Nov 2005

ISBN: 1590885899

As he watches his mother slowly die, Acey Tapp knows he owes a ton of money, so when he finds a card advertising McMunn and Son Investigations he goes there hoping to score a job. He meets elderly Webster Munn, the "son" in the company, but before they can talk the sleuth collapses and is rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile a client Karen Grout arrives wanting to hire Webster to find her missing daughter. Acey does not correct her identity misconception and accepts the case for Webster.

Karen explains that when her daughter Tina Lynn was sixteen she vanished, but clarifies that the last time she saw her daughter was in 1956, forty nine years ago. Webster splits the fee with Acey, telling him to go earn it. Acey starts with Tina Lynn's high school buddy Shelly Norton, nee Weiss, who gives him a picture of her best friend with a young man; insisting they ran off together. Acey recognizes the tattoo on the man as the same as one on a recently found dead hobo. As he follows the trail, handicapped by a local law enforcement official who discourages his cold case investigation, but encouraged by a possible new squeeze, Acey uncovers more than just a missing person who fled to Canada; he finds a series of homicides over the last five decades.

A tongue-in-cheek hard boiled detective story, THE HOBO CHRONICLES is a delightful mystery that works because of the relationships between Acey and several other important players, especially his sleuthing "mentor", who preps him on what he must do. The whodunit is cleverly written to fool readers (and Acey), though clues are in plain sight. However, besides a terrific action-packed tale, the keen humorous barbs between McMunn and Tapp make for a fun time.