Hi, I'm Jay, and this book, The Houseboat Detective, will be my eighth novel. It's a mystery/detective story with with comedic undertones.
Jake Sommers is a twenty-something man living in a dilapidated houseboat at Fisherman’s Wharf in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. He inherited the vessel from his great aunt, who also left him enough money to (barely) live on.
To help make ends meet, Jake plays piano in a nearby bar. He’s good, but he’s obsessed with Stride jazz from the 1920’s and 30’s, a style most people today aren’t interested in.
Jake’s a bit of a lost soul, floating through life, with no real direction. He spent some time in the army in Afghanistan, which only amplified his distance from other people. Partly because of that distance, and partly because of his job, where he gets a lot of free booze, he has a drinking problem.
Unknown to Jake, Frank McCluskey, the eccentric guy from the houseboat across the dock, puts an ad on Kijiji saying that Jake is a qualified and experienced private investigator. McCluskey thinks he’s doing Jake a favour by getting him out of the bar scene.
Jake only finds out about the ad when he’s visited by a prospective client who wants to use his services. Normally, he would have brushed them off, but the client is a beautiful woman, and he can’t resist taking on her case, even though he knows nothing about being a private eye.
But the case he agrees to turns out to be far more than he was expecting.
The novel begins lightheartedly, but becomes more serious as it progresses. The woman claims that she’s looking for her sister, and her true motives are the central mystery.
Jake Sommers is a twenty-something man living in a dilapidated houseboat at Fisherman’s Wharf in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. He inherited the vessel from his great aunt, who also left him enough money to (barely) live on.
To help make ends meet, Jake plays piano in a nearby bar. He’s good, but he’s obsessed with Stride jazz from the 1920’s and 30’s, a style most people today aren’t interested in.
Jake’s a bit of a lost soul, floating through life, with no real direction. He spent some time in the army in Afghanistan, which only amplified his distance from other people. Partly because of that distance, and partly because of his job, where he gets a lot of free booze, he has a drinking problem.
Unknown to Jake, Frank McCluskey, the eccentric guy from the houseboat across the dock, puts an ad on Kijiji saying that Jake is a qualified and experienced private investigator. McCluskey thinks he’s doing Jake a favour by getting him out of the bar scene.
Jake only finds out about the ad when he’s visited by a prospective client who wants to use his services. Normally, he would have brushed them off, but the client is a beautiful woman, and he can’t resist taking on her case, even though he knows nothing about being a private eye.
But the case he agrees to turns out to be far more than he was expecting.
The novel begins lightheartedly, but becomes more serious as it progresses. The woman claims that she’s looking for her sister, and her true motives are the central mystery.
Let me know if you're interested at: [email protected]