Private detective and retired counterintelligence officer Art Hardin stays away from the flashy kind of PI work, preferring to pay his bills by checking up on false disability claims, routine surveillance, and the like. So when the senior partner of one of the premier legal firms in Grand Rapids approaches Hardin about a job protecting his niece from her soon-to-be ex-husband for a couple of days, Hardin isn't exactly eager to take on the job. However, Hardin finds that the fee offered to too great to pass up. After a hatchet attack, a house burnt down, and a few violent encounters with some crooked cops, Hardin can hardly wait for the case to be over. But when the husband is found murdered, the niece attempts suicide, and Hardin is brought in on a trumped-up warrant for the crime, it is no longer a case that he is willing to walk away from—even if he could.

Robert E. Bailey’s Art Hardin became an instant mystery icon with the publication of his first novel, PRIVATE HEAT, which won the Josiah W. Bancroft Award at the Florida First Coast Writer's Festival in 1998 and was nominated for the 2003 Shamus Award, given by the Private Eye Writers of America. Now, in a new short story, Bailey gives readers a look into Hardin’s past and shows us a bit more of what made him the PI he is “today.” Be sure to read all of the Art Hardin mysteries, now available as eBooks from Ignition Books.

From the author of Private Heat comes the second in the Art Hardin mystery series.

Some secrets age well, others tend to fester. Art Hardin, a private investigator and retired counterintelligence officer, is a man of many secrets. One of these secrets has fallen into the hands of a local TV muckraker, which can cause enough trouble to keep most noir detectives busy for three hundred pages—Art's not that lucky. Just after Art locks horns with the journalist, his wife, Wendy, takes him to the airport to pick up a young friend returning from a Caribbean vacation. Karen Smith deplanes with a fabulous tan, a new beau, and a suitcase full of money; Karen doesn't know about the money, but her new Middle Eastern boyfriend does. Using a Canadian passport to enter the US, he put the money in Karen's suitcase so he wouldn't have to carry it through customs.After a donnybrook and a shootout at Karen's house, the money disappears. Lots of people want it. Some of them kidnap Karen, some of them set off a bomb at the TV station while Art is on the air with the muckraker. After that, things get nasty.