Ex-cop Thomas Haftmann, formerly of Cleveland Homicide, works as a private investigator in the resort town of Jefferson-on-the-Lake. You will follow his cases in these 15 short neo-noirs. Among them are "The Kneeling Woman," "Ni Escape, No Turning Back," "The Riding Boy," "The Slave Master's Dungeon," "Archangel's Daughter," "A Woman With Tea-Colored Eyes," and "The Dog Returneth to His Vomit." These have been collected from a variety of outstanding publications and blog sites, ranging from Powder Burn Flash to A Twist of Noir to Sex and Murder Magazine. Get ready to know Thomas Haftmann's...

Thomas Haftmann didn't recognize the word Saraband when the girl said it. He had to look it up: "a stately court dance from the eighteenth century in "slow triple time." Haftmann was a down-on-his-luck private eye with an ex-wife and debts, so he did skiptracing for a local bondsman. But then he takes an assignment to go to Florida to retrieve a runaway girl, a scholarship student named Raina Toivela. This job, I thought, will be easier than most. However, the assignment doesn't go as smoothly as he'd hoped. That's all too often the case for a private eye. Welcome to his world