Jack Eddy
Created by Dick Stodghill

Who says they don't write 'em like they used to?

Certainly not Dick Stodghill, whose JACK EDDY series of short stories is both a homage to the good old-fashioned private eye action of yore and a clear-eyed glimpse into the social and cultural reality of that past.

Twenty-something, with a receding hairline and a fistful of ambition, Jack is an operative for the Akron, Ohio branch of the Wellington National Detective Agency, circa 1937. He's slick, brash, and prone to cutting corners, much to the dismay of the younger -- and at times surprisingly naive -- crime beat reporter Bram Geary, the frequently bambozzled narrator of this series of entertaining and colourful short stories, all published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.

Both Jack and Bram live at Mrs. Bauer's boardinghouse. Poor ol' Bram usually ends up far more involved in Jack's cases than he would like. The "aw shucks" narration style, and the very real violence of the times give these tales a rather unique flavor, as though John Boy was writing true crime for Black Mask. Now there's a concept for you.

STRAIGHT FROM THE AUTHOR'S MOUTH

• "I'm a retired newspaperman, a reporter who spent the final 10 years writing a daily column for the Muncie Evening Press.  Won an award from UPI for the best daily column in Indiana.  Also did some sports work as well as covering the criminal courts during my reporter days -- loved covering high school events but also had the Cincinnati Reds beat during the Big Red Machine days of the 1970s plus Purdue, Indiana and Notre Dame football.
  .
  Among a variety of other jobs such as driving a cab in Akron I was an operative for Pinkerton's National Detective Agency back when it had offices in 33 cities.   It was a great job if you weren't interested in making money, but that also used to be true of the newspaper business.
  .
  In my younger days I was an 18-year-old rifleman with the 4th Infantry Division during the invasion of Normandy and subsequent campaigns, then was in the infantry again during the Korean War.  Glad that stuff's over and done with.
  .
  With the help of my wife Jackie I did a couple of history books on high school sports in the Akron area, but have never had a desire to get into the hassle of writing mystery novels.  Lazy, I guess.
  .
  These days I write an occasional Jack Eddy story -- another is coming up in a few months in AHMM -- and spend the rest of my time writing whatever comes to mind and visiting doctors, a thing that now qualifies me as a medical expert.
  .
  Glad you enjoy the Eddy/Geary series.  Writing them is fun, having grown up in that era, but at times it means spending a lot of hours reading old newspapers on microfilm to dig out the events of the day.  That's fun too, of course, if you have all the time in the world to spend on it."
  .(Dick Stodghill, January 2002)

EVIDENCE

• "Wait for the law to do something and we'll all be dead and buried. The agency doesn't clown around like that."
  -- Jack explains the rules.

SHORT STORIES

• "Blowup" (Oct. 1988, AHMM)
• "The Old Squad" (December 1988, AHMM)
• "Seven Dollar Death" (August 1989, AHMM)
• "A Deceitful Way of Dying" (September 1989, AHMM)
• "Pictures in a Book" (February 1990, AHMM)
• "Deadly Money" (November 1991, AHMM)
• "Cast a Final Ballot" (March 1993, AHMM)
• "A Clinical Interest in Murder" (November 1993, AHMM)
• "A Policy for Murder" (June 1994, AHMM)
• "Death on the Devil Strip" (November 1994, AHMM)
• "Nightmare on North Hill" (March 1997, AHMM)
• "The Phantom of Johnnycake Lock" (December 1997, AHMM)
• "Mayhem on Market Street" (March 2002, AHMM)
• "Switchback" (November 2002, AHMM)
• "The Friends of Jack Eddy" (March 19, 2007; Amazon).. Buy this Amazon short
• "The Survival of the Storms" (October 2007, AHMM)
• "Step Into My Parlour" (Holiday 2007, Thrilling Detective Web Site)
• "Panic On Portage Path"  (February 2008, AHMM)
• "Jack the Tripper"  (June 2009, AHMM)

COLLECTIONS

• The Jack Eddy Stories, Volume 1 (2006)... Buy this book.
  Contains the first eight stories in the series.
• The Jack Eddy Stories Volume 2  (2007)... Buy this book.
  Contains the second eight Jack Eddy stories.

RELATED LINKS

• Dick Stodghill.com
  The author's official site.
  
  
• Blog: Stodghill Says So
  "An opinionated posting on a variety of subjects by a former newspaper reporter and columnist whose daily column was named best in Indiana by UPI."

Respectfully submitted by Kevin Burton Smith. Thanks, Dick, for helping me keep your stories straight.