Title

A Place of Fog and Murder by ©T.E. MacArthur.

Published by Indies United Publishing House, LLC

First Edition — First Printing, 2019

Second Edition, 2023

Book format by T.E. MacArthur

Cover design by S.N. Jacobson and T.E. MacArthur

All rights reserved worldwide. No part of this publication may be replicated, redistributed, or given away in any form without the prior written consent of the author/publisher or the terms relayed to you herein. This includes no replication by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author / publisher. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts as part of a review.

The character of Philip Marlowe was created by Raymond Chandler.

The characters of Nick and Nora Charles are the creation of Dashiell Hammet.

ISBN: 978-1-64456-645-9 [Paperback]

ISBN: 978-1-64456-646-6 [Mobi]

ISBN: 978-1-64456-647-3 [ePub]

ISBN: 978-1-64456-644-2 [Hardcover]

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023943628

Attributions:

Veteran Typewriter font by Koczman Balint.

Port of San Francisco, Ferry Building: ID 37248306@Celso Diniz – dreamstime.com

To Lisa Orban of Indies United Publishing House for all the help and encouragement – and patience. Lots of patience.

To my Street Team: Lisa Towles, Dover Whitecliff, BJ & AJ Sikes, Bill Christianson, Jeff Cathcart and Sharon E. Cathcart for the amazing support for which I can never say thank you enough.

A tremendous thank you to fellow Indies United author and brilliant editor, Ana Manwaring, for Alpha Reading this second edition.

And much gratitude to Stephen Jacobson for once again creating a fabulous cover background, one even better than the first cover. I didn’t know that was possible.

In memory of Tay McArthur, Mary-Margaret Gridley McArthur, and Patrick James Lacy. You are deeply missed.

Welcome to a strange and wonderful Science Fiction 1930s America. Dieselpunk meets Raymond Chandler. Break out your copies of “The Big Sleep” and “The Thin Man” when you’re done here. Pull up a bottle of Old Forester Bourbon and a pack of Chesterfields (actually, you can skip the later – please,) and put on some Billy Holiday. Let go of everything you thought you knew about the time between the world wars, femme fatales, hardboiled detectives, and technology. In short – have a good time – my treat!

There are different types of danger out in the big, bad World. Of them, crime is the biggest. Every crime comes down to greed and fear. And every criminal is either a coward, a blackmailer, or a bully – sometimes they’re all of those at the same damn time. And sometimes, they’re the good guys.

I speak from experience.

~Lou Tanner, P.I., Notes for female Pemberton Graduates, 1935

THE CITY WAS A HAUNTING specter tonight. Eerie lights seeped through fingers of thick fog, revealing high-set rainclouds — when you could see them — in the color of dried blood and decomposing yellow. With the late fall comes all the dying. The trees, the leaves, the long days of summer, and the patience of one’s fellow man to remember his manners and to keep his homicidal desires to himself.

It was that sort of evening, too. Wet as an overworked cafe dishwasher and colder than a corpse’s embrace. That sort of evening.

I shoulda’ stayed inside with a snoot full of bourbon and a Guy Lombardo concert on the radio. “Shoulda’” being the operative word.

Look, every city has its tales of wasted youth, unapologetic greed, and emboldened desperation. The deep wounds of history are nothing more than slashes between those who have and those who have not. I’ve been both of those, up and down, rich and poor, always riding on the hills in life’s little cable car.

But, San Francisco, my city, brightens all its dark and dingy alleys with unique charms I can’t always put my finger on.

Sure, we have old fashioned cable cars left over from the last century. The Ferry Building and the Palace of Fine Arts, still standing after the 1915 Panama Pacific Exposition. The Fisherman’s Wharf Amusement Park. Chinatown and its exotic clubs. The Zakheim Murals on the Union Pacific rail aqueducts. The Trolleys and Nightcrawlers. The Montgomery Street Aero & Rail Station. All the architecture of allure.

And all of it a façade cloaking a city hanging on by a thread. Nuthin’ but pretty dressing, like a prostitute robed in a hand-me-down Adrian gown she found tossed in the trash by some respectable person who wouldn’t be caught dead in anything so out of date.

Any nostalgic, wistful thoughts passed right through my brain and vanished into the bleak fog.

And in this business, my business, and in this city, my city, good ole’ times are damn rare and precious.

When one looks for the dirty and the ugly underside of civilization, one can’t clutch their pearls when it shows up on a dead body.