The February Trouble: A Dave Garrett Mystery

Dave Garrett sensed that there was something wrong with the offer he'd just received. Sure an investigator does security work, but this outfit was big enough that they shouldn't have to come to him. And why wouldn't they bring in the police? As Garrett puts it when the check is held out to him, "I don't take sucker money." Unless, of course, he does: The Philadelphia-based investigator takes the check and the job, investigating a series of disruptions and threats aimed at stopping the opening of a new Chinese-style fast-food franchise. Something is definitely going on, something that leads to the kidnapping of the owner's wife, Anne Chadwick, while Garrett is supposed to be watching her. And still Chadwick resists going to the police. Garrett's advice seems to be ignored at every turn, but the cops don't ignore him when the Chadwicks' neighbor, and one of Anne's closest friends, is murdered in her living room and witnesses place the P.I. on the scene at the time. With the lovely Amish countryside as a backdrop, Dave Garrett's search for answers takes him ever more deeply into a family's troubled past . . . and ever closer to not having a future of his own.