In this short story Maggie Sullivan is lured to an address where she finds a body in an alleyway. Determined to find the killer she sets a trap. ( )

Solving a crime during the early 1930s was much different from what happens today. There was no DNA evidence, no easy communication to compare notes with other localities, no sophisticated equipment. What was available was the crime scene itself, eyewitnesses, accurate or not, and detective work to determine what evidence was or was not available.
In THE BAREFOOT STIFF, Maggie Sullivan is a short, sassy, perceptive detective whose abilities are both unrecognized and unappreciated by the police department. She doesn’t let that stop her, though a shortage of clients left her continuously looking for some to help her pay her bills.
When a blonde approached her at a lunch counter telling her that a “Gentleman wants to hire you,” and offered her ten dollars, she told her that she only took jobs from people who came to her office. She watched as the blonde walked away and realized that “Ten bucks would put gas in my car for a year and then some.”
A few hours later, Maggie was beginning to regret her quick reaction. “...a dead plant in the corner of my office and the bottle of gin in my bottom drawer both saw things my way. What could it hurt to listen to whoever had send the blonde?”
She decided to go to the address she had seen written on the $10 bill and ended up finding a recently killed man.
The police considered her to be a witness even though the man was already dead when she arrived at the scene. But they missed some evidence that she noticed and she decided to investigate on her own as they tried to identify the man and figure out a motive. One possibility that the police offered was that he was a bank robber. “Bank robberies had become a dime a dozen once the end of Prohibition left unemployed bootleggers seeking other sources of income.” Maggie began to focus on the evidence that wasn’t there to answer those questions.
Having read so many full-length detective novels, it took a different mindset to read one in a short story form. But THE BAREFOOT STIFF has all the elements of a full length novel but in a very condensed form.
I like M. Ruth Myers’ writing style as well as her characters and how they handle situations. There is not much character development but, in this short story, it wasn’t expected.
I’m looking forward to her next full length novel.
This book was a free Amazon download. ( )