Created by Robert White
Pseudonyms include Terry White, Robb White
Finnish-American small town private eye RAIMO “RAY” JARVI would probably be happy plying his trade in Northtown, Ohio, a relatively quiet rust-belt town on the shores of Lake Erie, dealing with his usual “unfaithful wives and petty personal disputes.”
He owns the two-story building on Bridge Street that houses both his small office and an upstairs apartment, also small, but he’s no swinging dick, firing guns all or kicking down doors. Traumatized and left facially scarred by a childhood incident at the age of ten, Ray came to private investigation relatively late in life, kept from having to seek employment thanks to a rather generous trust fund. Ray is content to drift along, doing what he can to keep a roof over his head and maybe–just maybe–do a bit of good.
“I knew enough pain in my youth not to want to want more. Helping people, paying my bills, and working my own hours seemed ideal.”
But the simple life he wants doesn’t seem to happen for Ray–high school reunions turn into mass shooting events, teen beauties drop dead of “natural cases” and beloved husbands die of suspicious “suicides.”
Fortunately, Ray’s small town decency and natural empathy shines through, and while he might not be anyone’s idea of kickass, he gets the job done.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Robert T. White grew up in Ashtabula, Ohio, and has worked in grocery and department stores, sailed as a deckhand on ore boats around the Great Lakes, worked as a mold puller in a plastics factory, and on the cleanup crew at Mexican Original, a taco factory in Fayetteville, Arkansas. He writes genre fiction, mostly crime, noir, and horror, including two–count ’em!– two ongoing private eye series. Besides the Jarvi series, he writes another featuring Thomas Haftmann. His Betray Me Not, a collection of revenge tales, was selected by the Independent Fiction Alliance as a Truly Best Independent Book of 2022, and several of his other novels and short stories, including “Inside Man,” which was selected for inclusion in the annual Best American Mystery Stories of 2019, and The Russian Heist, another suspense thriller, was awarded first place by Thriller Magazine in its Best Novel category of 2020. He once spent two extraordinary weeks in China, but it’s now clear that Ashtabula is the hill he’s chosen to die on and that’s fine by him.
NOVELS
- Northtown Eclipse (2018) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Northtown Blitz (2020) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
- Northtown Angelus (2024) | Buy this book | Kindle it!
Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith.
