The Lost Tire Gang

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

The year is 1921. The place is Owen Sound, Ontario. The hero is D.B.
Murphy, a struggling private detective. Murphy packs two pistols, a
rifle, and sometimes a submachine gun. He

rides a horse that likes to chase automobiles. He hangs out with a crowd
of characters who have names like Lori, Glori, and Dori Storey, Gas Head
Willy, and Razor Eddy. Murphy has been asked by Oddball, the High
Constable of Grey County, to help track down a gang of road bandits who
are preying on local motorists. If he cracks the case, Murphy gets $10
per day plus expenses while Oddball gets the glory and a promotion.
Preferring fortune to fame, Murphy takes the case and before long finds
himself enmeshed in a jigsaw puzzle involving remittance men,
bootleggers, Irish orphans, train robbers, and a deadly one-armed crime
lord known only as The Boss.

The author is obviously a great lover of both local history and gumshoe
machismo. His protagonist trades insults and hot lead with the bad guys
while taking the reader on a historic tour of Owen Sound and the
surrounding area. Lots of colorful characters (some based on real
people) fill the pages. The result is an American-style, hard-boiled
detective thriller set in small-town Ontario.

The Lost Tire Gang is a fun read and an entertaining way to absorb some
local history.