Did you know that there’s an entire mystery series set in a fictional version of Tipp City? It’s the Frank Harper mystery series, set in the fictional town of Cooper’s Mill. The books feature weather beaten ex-cop Frank Harper and a fictional Tipp City Police Department. There are five books in the series, and the sixth is coming out soon! Pre-order “A Splash of Scarlet” today by visiting www.gregenslen.com or use the QR Code. Please enjoy an excerpt from the upcoming novel, courtesy of the Gazette! More to come next week…

Chapter 1 - Gary

On a late September evening in 2012, four young men ambled randomly through a dark neighborhood, bored and looking for something to do. Trouble, or something like it.

They had been at one of the old car factories a few blocks over, breaking the remaining dirty panes of glass, and now they were bored again. It would be dark soon. They roamed the streets, mostly looking for a tourist to roll. They avoided the other gang bangers in the area—it was just easier to rob a tourist.

It was a Monday night in late September and the streets of this part of Gary, Indiana, were quiet, abandoned to the gathering dark. Most of the people who lived or worked around here were off the streets by 8 p.m., most likely for their own protection. Crime was rampant in this faded neighborhood, stuffed between huge, mostly abandoned factories to the south and a smattering of liquor shops and cheap hotels to the north.

To the uninitiated, this portion of Gary looked like it had been through a war. From a certain point of view, it had. Economics dictated that the money had gone away as soon as several of the larger factories closed in the late 1970s. Poverty and crime had swept in, covering the once-prosperous town like a tide, washing away hope and tranquility. Anyone with money had fled the area, leaving it to the criminals.

Now, the place looked like the worst neighborhood imaginable, a pit of dread in some war-torn, third-world country, a place that had long ago given up on peace or personal safety. Abandoned to squalor, the residents in this forgotten corner of America dreamed of only one thing—escape. A short drive through Gary or a hundred other similar small Midwestern towns made it abundantly clear that someone—or a whole group of people—had simply given up on this once-thriving community.

Bored, this group of young men and dozens of others like them spent their aimless nights climbing fences to gain access to places they shouldn’t, or swept through dark neighborhoods, trying every car door handle in turn, searching for an easy score. In between, they drank and made fun of each other and rattled through the streets like dried leaves in a gutter, looking for easy money. Tourists were the best, if you could find them. White folks, mostly, staying at the hotels up on Bay Street, the northern edge of their gang’s territory.

Money was hard to come by, and even though none of them was over 20, all of them lived on their own, long since kicked out of their respective parents’ homes.

They knew that life was about taking what you could, taking it from people who didn’t deserve it. In some ways, this group of four young men saw themselves as freedom fighters, recapturing some of the money that was rightfully theirs.

They had all been to the “nicer” towns in the area, tourists in their own right. They had seen the safe streets and the big, beautiful houses, the ones with wide, well-kept yards and fancy cars parked out front. It had been alien to them—the cars, just sitting there, with no one trying to steal them or at least strip them for parts. Not a single car up on blocks, the tires missing. All the wealth of the other towns they had seen, all those fancy things. All probably bought with stolen money, taken from the poor or plundered in some rich-person’s scheme.

It was enough to piss anyone off.

Tonight, Trey, the group’s defacto leader, was in a bad mood. It had been days since they’d had a good score, and nearly a week since he’d gotten high. It made him feel half crazy, like bugs crawling under his skin. His eyes scanned the dark streets, the hand in his pocket toying with a small, snub-nosed revolver. The gun was cheap but good—it made him feel powerful, like a god. His other hand scratched at a scab on his neck.

“What about that paint factory place again?” Nick asked. Nick was paper thin and the tallest of them. Great at getting over fences. He always looked sickly, like he was dying. “You know, where they paint those trucks?”

Trey looked at him and sneered—he couldn’t help it and didn’t care either. Nick was always suggesting that place, had been for nearly two years, ever since they’d gotten a fat wad of cash off a guy in the parking lot.

“They got a shift ending soon, right?” Nick said. “Maybe they gettin’ paid today. Knock somebody over the head, right?”

More to come next week. "A Splash of Scarlet" is the sixth book in the Frank Harper Mysteries series. Frank's got a lot of problems, but he's also tenacious and headstrong and good at solving crimes. Just don't bring up Hurricane Katrina around him or hide his bourbon. Pre-order “A Splash of Scarlet” today by visiting www.gregenslen.com or use the QR Code.