The Pinkerton and the Wizard

by Harvey Hetrick

Overview

A nineteenth-century Pinkerton detective finds his life intertwined with a Lloyd's insurance detective. Unknown to both of them, but suspected by the Lloyd's detective, the mythological wizard, Merlin, time travels from the twelfth century and covertly assists them in their investigations. While Merlin tries to fit into the nineteenth century, the Pinkerton detective struggles with his personal life after losing his partner during a train robbery.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781663200891
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/23/2020
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Harvey Hetrick, a retired engineer, uses aspects of his creativity and imagination to create a story with a unique blend of medieval intrigue, mystery, myth, magic, and buried treasure. After having earned bachelor degrees from Mississippi State University and the University of Utah, he now resides in Texas and has three daughters.

Editorial Reviews

2020-12-02
A famous wizard helps a 19th-century Pinkerton detective fight crime in this novel.

In this intriguing mix of magic and crime fighting, Merlin, King Arthur’s wizard—threatened by an evil sorceress—time travels with his wife to 19th-century, post–Civil War Philadelphia. There, he befriends Adam Blake, a Pinkerton detective (the book’s primary focus). Adam tries to prevent a train robbery; his partner is killed; his fiancee—his partner’s twin—jilts him; and he is shadowed by unanswered questions about his detective father. The man was involved peripherally in the circumstances leading to President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and was shot to death during a bank holdup. To cap Adam’s woes, after taking a hiatus to work with a circus, he is hit by a “shock wave” from a lightning strike. Saved by Merlin’s magic and subsequent prognosticating visions, Adam returns to investigative duties, with Merlin along as an interested observer. Adam’s new case involves archaeological treasures stolen from a museum, murderous villains, ancient Egyptian trinkets, a necklace worn by Cleopatra, a magical “healing cup,” an inept counterfeit money scheme, blackmail, the recovery of a cache of Confederate gold and silver, and clues to Capt. Kidd’s buried treasure. Joining Adam and Merlin is Edward Frost, an investigator for Lloyd’s of London. With unintentionally comic effect, Hetrick establishes Edward’s and Merlin’s bona fides as Englishmen through their use of such Wodehousian terms as by Jove, jolly good, old chap, and rollicking good time. The author succeeds in tying the many disparate elements to the fates of Lincoln and Adam’s father and adds some scene-setting depth with knowledgeable descriptions of shipyards and trains. Still, so much material packed into under 150 pages gives the novel the quality of an outline that could more credibly have been fleshed out into a series. And Hetrick should consider trimming entirely a tone-deaf and gratuitous train station encounter between White woman Rita Sims and Ezra, a Black man who became a porter after she “released him from being her slave” and who flashes her “a broad smile, showing a mouthful of white teeth.”

An imaginative but uneven fantasy/mystery hybrid that rushes from one plot point to another. (author bio)

Kirkus Reviews