Dancing in the Trap

The stationary was tinted pink, pulpy like craft paper and smelled better than anything had a right to. It was blackmail penned in letters so long and smooth, they could have haled a cab. Since leaving the merchant marines, Mickey Fairfax has eked out a living renting dinghies to scuttle around Boston Harbor. Though lately, time between clients is lengthening faster than he can tighten his belt. When a wealthy new acquaintance offers him money to travel to Paris to pay a blackmailer, Mickey accepts. But, when he discovers he's given the money to the wrong woman, he'll tangle with a pugilistic gangsters, a hop-headed hotel boy, a sultry stage siren, and the French police to figure out who she is.

With a heavy nod to detective noir greats like Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and Mickey Spillane comes a fast-talking, not-so hard-boiled hero, taken off the streets he's wise to, and plunged into a strange land, where he's trying to do the right thing, even if it's for the wrong reason.