The Maltese Meatloaf Mystery and Other Tales
A Phillip Bartlow Mystery
by
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The streets of Eda City were sloppy with floating rubbish; my footsteps were muffled by the drenching rain, making my trench coat feel like a lead shroud. My name is Philip Bartlow ...Private Culinary Investigator. Do you want to know about my life tracking down rotten meals in Eda City? It’s a rotten business like any other business ...except that ...only the blood shows.
I was closing in on Ralph's Cafe, famous for it's Maltese cuisine. My client, Vanessa Von Shnutz had retained me to expose the overcooked meatloaf served in that dive on Footloos Street in the Hardtack Section of town. As I ambled, feet sloshing, closer to Ralph's, my thoughts wandered back to my first encounter with that Von Shnutz dame.
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About the Book
This two part rollicking tongue-in-cheek film noir mystery begins in 1951 in Eda City, a small metropolis in the Mid-West. Retired detective Phillip Bartlow has made a name for himself as the city’s only Culinary Private Eye.
In Part One, The Maltese Mystery Meatloaf, Bartlow is hired by a beautiful young lady to hunt down an up and coming new chef who is serving his patrons dry meatloaf. Bartlow is thrown into a comic adventure which brings him in contact with a cast of characters that include local gangsters, restauranteurs, angry police and a psychotic murderer. In the midst of this tangled web of crime and mayhem, our hero suddenly finds himself falling in love with his secretary/research assistant, Connie.
Part two, The California Honeymoon Caper finds our now newlyweds, Phillip and Connie Bartlow, traveling cross country to spend their honeymoon in San Francisco and at Connie’s aunt’s caper farm in Santa Rosa, California. Phillip and Connie find themselves caught up in another perilous, but humorous, adventure involving revenge, murder, and exploitation by the unsavory characters that they meet on the train.
About the Author
Robert Oster is the author of The Maltese Meatloaf Mystery and Other Tales. Prior to his literary career, Dr. Oster, a psychologist specializing in REBT (Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy) and hypnotherapy, had presented a countless number of courses, seminars, workshops and training programs in the areas of stress management and burnout prevention, chemical dependency treatment, customer service, program development and team facilitation at colleges and to public and private sector organizations for over thirty years. Robert lives in Central New Jersey with his wife Judy, a college instructor.