The Body in the Truck

by Tim Kern

Overview

Inspired by a true incident: a supposedly empty rental truck is being readied for a customer, and when the back door opens, the funky smell turns out to be a body in a plastic trash bag.

Detective Fred "Tree" Stumpf gets the murder case and begins sleuthing. Something's going on at the U-Drive_Em; mileages are being reassigned, the surveillance cameras develop glitches, and employees are getting conflicting orders.

Soon, Detective Jerry Redding's case starts overlapping, and both detectives in the mid-size Indiana city are working again with each other, sorting out their respective cases and closing in on an interstate smuggling ring, Salvadoran illegals, Cuban green-card holders posing as Mexicans, the truck rental's father-daughter ownership team, and a crook named after a pasta who somehow has made a carpenter, a family man, rich beyond his dreams.

And they close in on all the criminals as they solve all the crimes, and come up with a surprise ending.

If you like twists, dogs, teens and toddlers, money, cigarettes, cops and crime, liars and killers, all in a mental maze that adults will get lost in and even middle-schoolers can read, read this.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780967411644
Publisher:	Tim Kern
Publication date:	01/31/2019
Pages:	298
Product dimensions:	4.25(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Tim Kern (1951 - ) was born near Chicago and has lived in ten states, from Alaska to Florida. Son of a lawyer and a brilliant poet/professional ballerina and orphaned at 42, he had to rely on his Northwestern MBA and jobs as financial analyst, regional manager, CFO, and CEO to put bread on the table until he invested fifteen less-lucrative years in teaching economics to high schoolers, undergraduates, and Ph.D. candidates. "The material's all the same," he says. "The laws of economics don't change. Peoples' preferences change. Students change. Change keeps life interesting." He spent a lot of time on talk radio ("Tim Kern, Talking Sense"), nine years on as many as two hundred stations, trying to solve the world's problems, using logic, research, and careful phrasing, none of which changed anyone's mind. A divorce unexpectedly turned him to smithing words. A friend was starting a blog (whatever that was -- this was in 2000), and invited him to be the "editor." Some three years and thousands of articles later, including hundreds of original pieces and interviews, Tim decided to write on his own, and over the next decade and a half wrote for over fifty magazines in the aviation industry, plus approximately a hundred companies - technical articles, how-to advice, new products, programs, sales and marketing... He's been a professional race car mechanic and driver, a motorcycle racer, a race car driving instructor, a machinist, and a nationally-recognized commercial and portrait photographer. He was a competitive pistol and long-distance shooter, and a pawn shop manager. He occasionally helps out at a local automotive garage, changing oil or engines or "whatever they need." And he earned a Bachelor of Music degree. Today, he writes. Manuals, magazine articles, and, lately, novels. He agrees with Stephen King that story ideas need to be spontaneous, and tries to follow Elmore Leonard's advice about "try[ing] to leave out the parts that readers tend to skip." This results in quick-read books, and allows readers to imagine the perfect characters and settings even as they enjoy absorbing the dialog and action. He wrote and published his first three novels (EGOFALL, Caught by a Cat, and Like Murder Like Son) in a two-year period, beginning in 2016. His FB page, Writings of Tim Kern, features other ideas, raw and finished; short stories; reader questions; updates, plus occasional ways to get freebies if people want them. Kern also occasionally edits and publishes others' novels (some now in the works) under his publishing company's MYSTERY ONE (tm) label. He lives near Indianapolis with his calico cat, Moochie.

Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Chapter One: You're gonna need a different truck.

Chapter Two: Where do we start?

Chapter Three: Daniel and Lulita Estes

Chapter Four: Lulita's last night

Chapter Five: Crooked books

Chapter Six: Daniel Estes faces single fatherhood.

Chapter Seven: Alfetta and Tony

Chapter Eight: Death begins at forty.

Chapter Nine: Alfetta's Math

Chapter Ten: Ferguson and Plessy

Chapter Eleven: Alfetta's story

Chapter Twelve: Breaking bad backfires.

Chapter Thirteen: Estes examines his soul.

Chapter Fourteen: The new normal

Chapter Fifteen: Nana's an accidental spy.

Chapter Sixteen: Sharonda and Connie, just us girls

Chapter Seventeen: The brief debrief

Chapter Eighteen: A change of scenery

Chapter Nineteen: The new normal. Or not.

Chapter Twenty: Vittorio's daughter

Chapter Twenty–one: The missing Miata

Chapter Twenty–two: A short PT cruise

Chapter Twenty–three: Tony Gemelli

Chapter Twenty–four: The bust

Chapter Twenty–five: Monday morning going down

Chapter Twenty–six: The daughters Estes

Epilogue

About Tim Kern

Other Titles by Tim Kern

Connect with Tim Kern

Editorial Reviews

"I think the story was fantastic and entertaining... I’m looking forward to the release and I hope you continue with more stories with Jerry, Fred, and Connie!"

“You crafted an intelligent, witty, face-paced crime novel that kept my interest from page one until The End.”

“I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story and I can’t wait for [the paperback] to come out so I can review it on Amazon!”

“The character development is stellar and the setting and tone of the story are consistent and intriguing.”

"WOW!!! This is fabulous and you deserve every single 5[star rating]!"

From the Publisher