Created by George C. Chesbro
(1940-2008)
A series of short stories featuring GARTH FREDERICKSON, a former NYPD lieutenant now pounding the pavement as a private investigator in Cairn, New York, a Big Apple suburb.
If Garth’s last name, or his creator’s identity ring a bell, it’s because Garth’s “weird little brother” is world-renown criminalogist/private eye “Mongo the Magnificent”. Mind you, Garth’s a rather quirky gumshoe himself, “rawly sensitive to emotional and spiritual signals sent by others” after having been poisoned (by a mad scientist, no less!), but even he admits “My brother’s the famous one; I’m mostly famous for being his brother.”
His long-suffering wife, popular folk singer Mary Tree, doesn’t quite understand his strange affliction–not that Garth does either, and Mongo–no stranger to things that go bump in the night–mostly enjoys teasing him about it. Garth, however, is learning to channel his odd ability, signaled by a peculiar taste in his mouth, peculiar to bitter chocolate, to use it for his investigations.
Yeah, bitter chocolate.
The stories have all appeared in EQMM, where their inventive, anything goes attitude proved very popular, with 1997’s “The Problem With The Pigs” scooping up the 1997 EQMM Readers Award.
SHORT STORIES
- “First Strike” (December 1991, EQMM)
- “The White Bear” (May 1992, EQMM)
- “Lone Wolf” (July 1993, EQMM)
- “Haunts” (October 1993, EQMM)
- “Forced Moves” (Mid-December 1993, EQMM)
- “The Problem with the Pigs” (June 1997 EQMM)
- “Home Inversion” (June 2009, AHMM)
COLLECTIONS
- Lone Wolves:Short Fiction (2003; aka “Lone Wolves: Stories”) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
Includes five stories featuring Garth.
FURTHER INVESTIGATION
- Dangerous Dwarf
Hunter Goatley’s George C. Chesbro web page. - I Ain’t Afraid of No Ghosts
Things that go bump in the night, and the eyes who go after them.
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
