Dolores Hitchens

Bert Hitchens

Collins and McKechnie, special agents of the railroad police in Los Angeles, had a number of problems on their hands. There was the matter of that starving, badly beaten young Mexican whom Collins had found in the refrigerator car. He had whispered, "Joya" -- Spanish for "jewelry." And then there was the blonde who reported $75 worth of baggage stolen, undervaluing her loss by many thousands of dollars. McKechnie's case involved a shapely, violet-eyed number who demanded to know what had really happened to her father in the freight yards. And what had happened to his money. When the cases merged into one, Collins and McKechnie found that they were up against something far from routine -- large-scale racketeering, with side effects of theft, brutality, and murder --

F.O.B. Murder

This crime novel from the authors of The Man Who Followed Women features two Los Angeles railroad detectives and explosive suspense. Tommy Collins has escaped from a midwestern prison, using dynamite to blast his way out—and killing a nurse in the process. The explosion was felt over a thousand miles away, where Tommy’s sister lives in fear in Los Angeles. She has squirreled her mother and younger sister away, afraid Tommy will come after them for turning him in to the cops. Aftershocks also shake the LA office of railroad detectives Chuck Reeves and veteran John Farrel when some remote railway yards become the targets of mysterious detonations. Connections are made, and the detectives quickly realize Tommy holds a violent grudge against the railroad for firing him from his job. And with nothing to lose, his rampage is getting worse the closer he gets to his desperate family . . . “Almost unbearable suspense . . . Holds the reader to the last punctuation mark.” —Greensboro News & Record

Bert Hitchens

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