The Lock And The Damned (Private Eye Seamus Taggert Book 1)

It’s 1942 and Seamus Taggert, a morose former St. Paul police detective recently pensioned out due to injuries incurred during a bank robbery, is playing at being a private detective, trying to make ends meet on a half-pension and wishing there was something he could do to help the war effort when a strange woman shows up in his crummy office with a horse-choking roll of cash and a missing person’s case. Oddly enough the missing person is none other than Quinn Delaney, the infamous former bootlegger Taggert vainly pursued during Prohibition and currently Number Two on Taggert’s “List of Guys I’m Going To Kill If I Ever Get The Chance”. What’s even better, there’s a bonus if Taggert finds Delaney within a week’s time!

But Quinn Delaney isn’t your ordinary missing person. He dodged the St. Paul cops and the FBI all throughout Prohibition and if he doesn’t want to be found, he isn’t going to make it easy. No longer on top of his game and without the resources of the police department behind him, Taggert reluctantly accepts the help of Janice Pemberton, a resourceful young reporter with a mysterious past and with wants and needs of her own. Her price; an in-depth interview and a feature story on the Hero Cop who single-handedly stopped a bank robbery.

Despite Pemberton’s assistance, Taggert soon finds himself butting heads with his former partner, the FBI, a team of Nazi saboteurs and Delaney himself who doesn’t want to be found because he’s walking a tightrope between the FBI and the Nazi saboteurs while trying to turn a profit off both.

So how far will Seamus Taggert, the pensioned-out and socially withdrawn Hero Cop, go to find Quinn Delaney? Will he risk his life for a wad of cash or a sense of patriotism? For the love of a woman? Or will he put everything on the line merely for revenge?