Mugged by an Angel

A week before Christmas, 1942, a crook makes off with presents intended for poor kids at an after-school youth center, bashing the handyman over the head in the process. Private investigator Maggie Sullivan, no fonder of kids than she is of the cut-rate fee she accepts for the job, soon suspects there's more to the burglary than meets the eye.The handyman, recuperating at home, seems to have been addled by the blow to his head.. He keeps insisting he was attacked by an angel. As she ferrets her way to the truth, Maggie is helped by a pair of ten-year-old girls and a flamboyant local woman who in the 1920s was a notorious speakeasy owner and now is a very rich pillar of society with a tendency to take over.This SHORT STORY features characters from novels in the author's Maggie Sullivan mystery series. M. Ruth Myers received a Shamus Award from the Private Eye Writers of America for Don't Dare a Dame, the third book in her Maggie Sullivan mysteries series. The series follows a woman P.I. in Dayton, OH, from the end of the Great Depression through the end of WW2. Other novels by Myers, in various genres, have been translated, optioned for film and condensed for magazine publication. Some were written under the name Mary Ruth Myers. She has a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Missouri J-School. Prior to becoming a novelist, she worked on daily papers in Wyoming, Michigan and Ohio. She also spent five years working as a ventriloquist. The author and her husband live in Ohio. When not writing, she plays Irish traditional tunes on the concertina with more enthusiasm than skill. (Then again, how many people do you know who even play the concertina?)