Dancing in the Trap

The stationary was tinted pink, pulpy like craft paper, and smelled better than anything had a right to. It was a mail penned in letters so long and smooth, they could have hailed a cab.

Since leaving the merchant marines, Mickey Fairfax had eked out a living renting dinghies to scuttle around Boston Harbor. When a wealthy acquaintance asks him to travel to Paris to deliver a blackmail payment, it sounded like a free vacation. But, when Mickey discovers he's given the money to the wrong woman, a hive of gangsters and the French police believe he's the key to finding her.

In the tradition of Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald, comes a hard-boiled hero plunged into in a strange land, trying to do the right thing, even if it's for the wrong reason.

©2019 James Matthew Whelpley (P)2021 James Matthew Whelpley