Hello everyone. My name is Sydney Lockhart. I’m thirty years ago and just launched my third career. A year ago, I tossed aside a perfectly fine, secure position as a science teacher after the classroom snake escaped and tried to swallow one of my students. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the excitement of wrangling twenty-five hysterical adolescents; it was the paltry paycheck that went along with it.

So, I decided to try to make a go of it in a man’s world. The year is 1953, and I’m the first female reporter hired by The Austin American Statesman. After an assignment—covering a political powwow in Palacios, Texas—turned into an exposé on murder, scandal, and deception, of which I was a surviving victim, my credibility as a journalist escalated. However, crime reporting led to me being in the wrong places at the wrong times, and instead of reporting the news, I spent time tracking down killers. I didn’t realize I was good at this until I met Detective Ralph Dixon—sexy, smart, single Ralph Dixon. We met over a dead body. He thought I was the killer, and I thought he was an arrogant prig, but that didn’t stop us from lusting after one another. We ended up working on cases together. Before I knew it, we formed a detective agency. Not a day goes without our phone ringing nonstop asking us to find missing persons, trail cheating spouses, root-out cheating employees, and of course, solving murders. I still moonlight as a reporter, but I spend my days getting paid to track the bad guys.

My day begins with me waking up to the smell of coffee and the sight of Dixon in his boxers rummaging around in my kitchen. Over breakfast, we toss a coin to see who will walk Monroe, my poodle, and clean my cat Mealworm’s litter box. We ignore my ringing telephone because chances are it’s my mother calling to give me grief about something trivial. Finally, we head to our office to see what the day offers.

A couple of days ago, we agreed to take the case of one Mr. Gerald McGuire, who claimed he’d been swindled by one Johnny Pine, a bookie from New Orleans. McGuire had been tailing Pine and had gotten word that Pine was in Austin, staying at the Regency Hotel, which happened to be near our office. McGuire didn’t want to go to the cops since they weren’t sympathetic with people who dealt with bookies. He also claimed that Pine was leaving in the morning and checking into the Menger Hotel in San Antonio. He wouldn’t say how he knew, only that he got a tip. After hearing Gerald McGuire’s dubious account of what happened, I was reluctant to take him on as a client. We were no longer desperate for business. Since solving the double murder of future gubernatorial candidate at the Driskill Hotel less than a month ago, the phone of our fledgling detective agency hasn’t stopped ringing. Not only do we have a full schedule, but we can also pick and choose our clients.

The swindle involved McGuire betting his life savings of twenty thousand dollars on a Louisiana thoroughbred running in the Travers Stakes in New York. Pine absconded with the money. I felt any man who would put his life savings on a horse deserved what he got. As McGuire pleaded for our help to find Johnny Pine, I looked at Dixon and shook my head. My slightly older, apparently much wiser partner responded with a patient smile. McGuire explained he put his money on a three-year-old gelding named Surefooted because the stats were none like he’d ever seen. I scoffed at what was obviously a gross exaggeration. Before I could utter a word, Dixon said, “Three-hundred-dollar retainer, fifty bucks a day, and expenses.” Without hesitation, McGuire opened his wallet and threw the cash on the table, proving he wasn’t all that broke. Dixon told Phoebe, our new secretary, to write out a receipt. Done deal— new case on the books.

My job was to follow Johnny Pine to San Antonio while Dixon worked the case from Austin. Fine, just fine. Except the morning after checking in to the Menger Hotel, Pine was murdered. As usual, I was a suspect. To make matters worse my car was stolen, so I elicited the help of an Irish cab driver named Taco and a bouncer named Rip. Soon I was on the trail of Nora Jasper, a harlot jazz singer and Pine’s girlfriend. Corpses started to pile up and my home life went south. But the investigation took a bizarre turn when I was whacked over the head and thrown into the river. I surfaced with a faulty memory, uncertain of who I could trust. My only choice was to find the killer before the killer found me or before I got arrested.

Murder at the Menger, A Sydney Lockhart Mystery #5
Genre: Cozy
Release: June 2022
Purchase Link

The Mrs. Maisel of the mystery world, Sydney Lockhart, takes you on a thrill-ride around San Antonio as she searches for the next killer.

She’s at it again, Sydney Lockhart is trying to solve a murder in another famous hotel while avoiding being locked up for the very crime she’s investigating. Bribes, fixed races, dirty money and unkempt places. A string of illicit deeds that trails from San Antonio to New Orleans and back again. Be it plane, train or automobile, Sydney will get to the bottom of this case in her own determined style.

A cozy mystery with lots of humor and a few creepy creatures that crawl, you will find yourself on an entertaining goose chase until the very end.

Meet the author
Kathleen Kaska is the author of the awarding-winning mystery series: the Sydney Lockhart Mystery Series set in the 1950s and the Kate Caraway Animal-Rights Mystery Series. She also writes mystery trivia. The Sherlock Holmes Quiz Book was published by Rowman & Littlefield. Her Holmes short story, “The Adventure at Old Basingstoke,” appears in Sherlock Holmes of Baking Street, a Belanger Books anthology. She is the founder of The Dogs in the Nighttime, the Sherlock Holmes Society of Anacortes, Washington, a scion of The Baker Street Irregulars. Kathleen writes the tongue-in-cheek blog, “Growing Up Catholic in a Small Texas Town.”

Connect with Kathleen at her website, kathleenkaska.com, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, BookBub, and Amazon Author Page.

All comments are welcomed.