About the Author...

Richard Blaine (pseudonym) first wrote about Michael Garrett in the 1980s.  As a part-time author, he also consulted with various companies and helped them produce documentation to enable staff members to understand how to use their computer systems effectively.  Subsequently, Blaine went to graduate school and then became a mental health counselor, specializing in trauma and anxiety-based disorders.  He had a very busy practice, lasting for twenty-five years, from which he then retired and returned to his earlier love of writing historic mystery novels.

About the Book...

The Detective Michael Garrett Mysteries

Book 1 - The Silver Setup (2022)
​Book 2 - The Tainted Jade (2023)
Book 3 - The Emerald Frame (2024)

Early in 1948, L.A. private detective Michael Garrett comes to Philadelphia to testify in a missing persons case.  While there he is asked to travel to the small town of Lancaster in western Pennsylvania, where he is hired by the alluring Lenore Stevens to find her missing husband, Charles.  Finding him turns out to be easy.  He is stretched out on a bed in a dubious place called the Shady Lodge Motel with a bullet in his chest and a gun in his hand.  The local cops first call it suicide but then decide it’s murder come to suspect Garrett.  To prove his own innocence and keep his agreement with Lenore Stevens, Garrett must find the real killer.  In the process he encounters threatening gangsters, corrupt police officers, and a demanding mob boss who owns and operates a local casino called the Silver Club.  Compounding this challenge, Garrett comes to realize that the question is not who would want to kill the man whose business employs most of the town’s residents, but how many would want him dead?