The Grab-A-Cab Murder (The Mike Fargo Mysteries, #7)

The latest entry in The Mike Fargo Mysteries series, THE GRAB-A-CAB MURDER, is an action-packed novella that takes the reader back to the spring of 1921. Fargo has just been promoted to detective after some ten years walking a New York City beat. When he's sent to check out a double-murder of a cabbie and his fare on his very first day he soon realizes he has to learn how to handle his new job on the fly.
The case turns out to be bigger than anyone thought when the murdered passenger turns out to be Arthur Worthington, the owner of the new Grab-a-Cab Company, shot in one of his own cabs. A random robbery or something more? That's what Fargo has to find out. He soon learns that Worthington is also the owner of Worthington & Sons, a major clothing manufacturer. The list of possible suspects quickly grows and when a second murder takes place a short time later, Fargo knows there is something much larger in play.
As the investigation widens, Fargo finds himself dealing with the growing criminal element at the beginning of the Prohibition era in New York City, as well as some high-rolling Park Avenue lawyers. Were the murders about the Grab-a-Cabs or the clothing business, or maybe both? Or was it simply a personal vendetta? As he pursues a number of divergent leads, Fargo finds his own safety and indeed his life in danger. And he also has to decide just what kind of detective Mike Fargo wants to be.

Bill Gutman has been writing for more than four decades. His writing life has seen him publish some 200 books for both children and adults, fiction and non-fiction alike. He has written many biographies and sports histories, as well as ghosting a family memoir. His biographies include such diverse personalities as Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, football coach Bill Parcells, Venus and Serena Williams, jazz great Duke Ellington and former president Andrew Jackson. He has worked with sports figures Kevin Kennedy, Pepper Johnson and Bobby Thomson on as-told-to books, and co-authored a series of sports books for young girls with current Good Morning America co-host Robin Roberts. And he has interviewed countless athletes, musicians and others.
Mr. Gutman's current passion is a series of novels and novellas featuring a tough detective working in 1920's New York City. The Mike Fargo Mysteries bring to life a wild period sparked by Prohibition, which banned the trafficking and sale of alcoholic beverages. But it was also a time when sports flourished, as did Broadway shows, jazz music and the movies. The popular culture dictated that women no longer had to stay at home and the flapper was born, a new age woman who smoked and drank, partied, and danced the Charleston, Black Bottom and the Shimmy. It was the era of hip flasks and speakeasies, and also organized crime. Mike Fargo navigates the City not only chasing murderers and crime bosses, but interacting with real characters such as Babe Ruth, Texas Guinan, Mae West, Mayor Jimmy Walker and others.
There are six books in the Mike Fargo series thus far – the novel Murder on Murderer's Row and novellas Death of a Flapper, Murder on Broadway and Seven Days to Murder, A Mike Fargo Trilogy that includes the three novellas, and Roaring Twenties Cop, Mike Fargo's Own Story.