It all began…

It was a dark and stormy night. I was sitting at my desk, finishing up a crossword puzzle and thinking of calling it a day, when my door opened and a visitor entered, without knocking. She spread her umbrella out in the corner and took off her raincoat. It was a blonde--the tall, breathtaking kind. The scent of jasmine and trouble wafted in with her. She leaned over my desk, affording me a glimpse of paradise, and said, in a soft and sultry voice: "I need your help, and I’ll pay whatever it takes."

Just then my cell phone rang, and I opened my eyes. I was sitting in my surveillance vehicle. It was right at ninety-eight degrees outside, only about a hundred and five in the car. No rain in sight. I was in the middle of Nowhere, waiting for my subject to do something. Anything.

I answered the insistent phone. It was a client, from an insurance company. He wanted me on the other side of the state by six the next morning. It was a really, really important, rush-rush case. Like them all. My first thought was: Where’s my Gatorade bottle? I gotta pee…

But to begin at the beginning: Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Loner Hatch. I’m a private investigator. A private eye, in the vernacular. Have been for many years. Bear with me while I regale you with a brief history.

I started out as a store detective, busting shoplifters. The dregs. Then I became an "Internal Investigator," in the employ of major retail corporations, busting employees (and management) for theft and embezzlement. A step up, for sure. I moved on to private investigation work, handling divorce and child custody cases, process serving, undercover assignments, and bounty hunting.

I eventually started my own company, dealing only with insurance fraud investigations. A specialist.

In this space, I’ll be dealing with all the above—all these aspects of my chosen career. I’ll be writing about actual cases. Some of them are sad, some pathetic, some unbelievable. Most of them are funny, at least in retrospect. You’ll read about bizarre sightings, barn raisings and mothers’ reunions, and the fascinating cases of the Cheating Golf Pro, the Urban Lumberjack, and the Dummy Tire Buyer, among the many others from my files.

Besides entertainment, I’ll be providing, I hope, interesting information on the real world of private investigations. There are people who’d love to experience the glamorous life of a private eye. I’d love to experience the glamorous life of a private eye. But the fact is that my job consists of, in a nutshell, long stretches of waiting and waiting--sheer boredom--interspersed with moments of intense concentration, trepidation, excitement--pure exhilaration, when the game is afoot.

In my line of work, I see the worst in human beings. But I still have faith in them. If there’s one thing you can count on, it’s that they’ll never surprise you, but sometimes they surprise you in good ways.

Stay tuned…