Category:  Crime Publisher: Grand Mal Press ISBN-10:  0982945973 Type: Fiction Pages: 236 Copyright: September 15, 2011 ISBN-13: 9780982945971 Private investigator Thomas Haftmann takes on a desperate father's case that begins with a search for a missing daughter and finds him in the midst of a conspiracy of racists and one very dangerous killer hiding in their midst.  Ohio private investigator Thomas Haftmann is walking into big trouble the day a grieving father shows up in his office and begs him to find his missing daughter. Haftmann soon discovers a sordid trail that winds through Boston's notorious Combat Zone of vice, drugs, and prostitution. Haftmann doesn't know which way to turn as violence in the form of racists cults, crooked cops, and thugs comes at him from all directions.   One thing he knows for sure:  a dapper, smooth-talking FBI agent is using him as a stalking horse to lure a serial killer out of hiding.   The only one he knows he can trust is himself. Excerpt I looked across my desk and tried to appear sympathetic. His eyes, brown and moist with sorrow, looked into mine—at least, the only one that’s capable of reflecting much light to a damaged optic nerve in my left eye. He reminded me of a whippet I used to own. I scolded him once for wetting the couch and it took six months for me to get him to stop looking at me that way. The daughter’s eyes in the photo were standard newspaper eyes: flat and black. Micah, my ex-wife, had those eyes too. Haunting eyes, knowing eyes. I asked questions about the newspaper item he had taken back from me and refolded carefully like a valuable medieval manuscript. He spoke slowly, each word dropping like acid as I pried the facts loose from the scrambled text of his pain. What smoldered beneath the rant of a simple man’s appeal to an unjust earthly tribunal was simple, if not exactly eloquent. My cop years had taught me that real grief is always numbingly simple. In the pauses of his narrative, the skin around his moist eyes would tighten or he would suddenly turn his head to look out my window at the passersby and the cars trolling the Strip. I watched him blink away tears. When I was a boy, I had come upon a snake sunning itself along the roadway. It was irresistible. I had to touch its tail. It whipped off into the tall grass. For a long time my finger held the electricity where the reptile had been touched. O’Reilly was filling up my office with that kind of unease. But there was nothing to put my finger to—just a father lamenting grief for his missing child. The next part was obvious, so I asked: “What do you want me to do?” “I want you to find her and bring her home.” “I have to ask this, you understand. What if she’s dead?” “Then tell me where she’s buried so I can bring her home.”I asked him several more questions about the Cruel Court’s “client”—his ex-wife, not surprisingly, and the “slaving operation,” simply his own poetic coinage for the judgment that went against him. He wasn’t the first man to come through my office door shaking his fist at the system. Being in Cleveland homicide for as many years as I’d been, I had acquired the cop’s distaste for the law’s minions very easily, especially trial lawyers. Either they’re too chickenshit to go after the bad guys for fear of damaging that all-important win record or they want to plea bargain it right out from under you. And always the incessant clamoring for more evidence, more witnesses, despite the fact that you’ve spent every moment of your fifteen-hour working day putting together a brilliant circumstantial case against a suspect. They’ll give you all the reasons in the world too, lawyers. Sometimes I wish I had gone to law school like my buddy Reggie, now the judge of the Western Court district. That way, life is simpler: everybody who walks through your door wants only one of two things: either that person wants you to help them keep their money or they want you to take it away from somebody else. I said, “Let me explain my business to you, Mister O’Reilly.” What followed was my tried and true pitch for services to be rendered and costs thereof. I had heard myself say the same thing to dozens of people over the years—bland and dry as rice cake—and I was never good enough a forecaster to tell whether this client would be better or worse for the answers I might find. He listened, nodding his head several times as I mentioned per diem costs, extra expenses the client must reimburse me for. I told him I expected a bonus if I found her.

Haftmann's Rules by Dave Gammon
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Book Review: Haftmann’s Rules – Author Robert White
Dave Gammon 04/10/2012 Book Reviews
HAFTMANN’S RULES
By Robert White
Grand Mal Press
“Blood is like a rainbow, like red velvet when it first flows, black in the moon light.”
Every now and again a volume of literature is so gritty, so enthralling, so psychologically spell-binding we tend to forget what particular genre it slides most neatly into. Robert White’s story of private dick Thomas Haftmann and his obsession with solving an increasingly complex case is, if nothing else, versatile in this respect. You need not be a fan of Dark Noir, detective or mystery tales to engage with nails cinched deep into this suspenseful novel.
When veteran private eye Thomas Haftmann is approached by potential client John O’Reilly to find his missing daughter Annaliese he eludes to his economic woes illustrating the initial sketching unto the reader of our protagonist’s perpetual spiral into disdain. He takes the case on after several stipulations and a generous pay scale even though his former cop instincts tell him something is off about this character. With a sense of rejuvenation Haftmann delves into his investigation with passion.
As he interviews O’Reilly’s ex-wife and Annaliese’s mother Ingrid our fearless private eye soon learns a deep dark secret behind the motive of her sudden departure. Without unveiling too much of John O’Reilly’s skeletons it would be suffice to say his prior actions were anything but pure of nature. Venturing forth Haftmann continues to peel back the layers of the investigation while he questions former friends, roommates and even a previous professor. The pieces begin to click together in this puzzle leading our investigation to the ghettos of Boston.
The body count quickly rises as he finds and confronts Annaliese. The tale takes a shocking twist as Haftmann utilizes his former law enforcement ties to learn of a sinister motive fueled by politics, perversity and white supremacy. Soon the private eye must watch his back and sleep with one eye open as he comes closer to unveiling the truth behind the magnitude of this underground society.
Dark, graphic, unapologetically violent this urban tale contains all the components of a good old fashioned crime novel. The plot is so engaging we frequently forget we’re reading anything but a horror novel. This bursts the flood gates wide open for debate if this collection even belongs on a horror based site for review. I assure you faithful phenoms of fright this most certainly is not horror. However, the action sequences and brawls are depicted with such vibrant brutality and merciless force the terror quite evidently is found in the rain of blood. If a film adaptation would surface, which is entirely plausible given talent of White’s prose, one Quentin Tarantino would make an ideal directional candidate in spirit of Reservoir Dogs or Kill Bill.
The sense of empathy border lining pity for the pathetic Thomas Haftmann enables us as the reader to identify with his woes. We can relate to his exploited insecurities of the detective, take them on as our own and cheer the crime fighter on even to the very bitter end. His cynicism is captured effectively and his banter is often comical if not charming on all scandalous fronts from his ex-wife running away with another man he’d happened to discover them in the throes of amorous passion to the road map of scars and debilitations of a battered body from constant pursuit of righting a world that’s gone horribly wrong; to his views, perceptions and perspectives on the very legal and justice system itself and all its corruptions with flaws along the way. Haftmann is undoubtedly the voice of the common man.
The controversial topics of racism, drugs and prostitution is covered to morbidly enthrall the readers. Let’s face it our society is fixated on the doom, gloom and dread of circumstances. Anyone tune into the six o’clock news recently? Enough said. White not only realizes this concept of enchanted psychological mutilation and celebrates it, exploits it by searing the very last nerve of innocence lost. In Haftmann’s spare time he even seeks out swingers for torrid, debaucherous menagerie.
Robert White knows the subconscious well and tells an immensely gripping tale on numerous levels. I’d openly embrace the opportunity to read any future endeavors of Thomas Haftmann’s adventures, a refreshing change from the standard of horror.