'The Curious Case of June Watson': How to Get Away With Getting Away, An Introduction
'The Curious Case of June Watson' is available now on Amazon.
"June was sure that her aunt had been murdered by the next-door neighbour. But it made no sense! She had no evidence, no clear motive she could pinpoint, and yet…"
A chance encounter leads cursed detective Thorfinn Grimm to a deceptive new case, and a client who could prove to be the perfect assistant… or the perfect killer.
As the bodies start piling up, Finn must use the full power of his unique mind to find the solution. But what does all of this have to do with a murdered gangster?
The Curious Case of June Watson was the second Thorfinn Grimm story serialized on Substack. While A Game of Corpse and Robbers was where Finn originated, The Curious Case is where his abilities (and his curse) were fully fleshed out. The story was previously included in the annual anthology Thorfinn Grimm: Year One, but this time, it’s got its own dedicated cover, narrative structure, and introduction. You can read that introduction below, and if you’d like to own your own copy (and buy me a coffee two months from now in the process), here’s the link:
How to Get Away With Getting Away
We tend to underestimate just how difficult it is to make a person disappear. The internet has made it even harder, but it’s been like this for a long time, most of human history, in fact.
Back in 1974, a British earl disappeared while under investigation for the murder of his children’s nanny. Not long after that, Australian police caught a break in the case when a man calling himself Clive Mildoon deposited a large sum of money in cash at the Bank of New Zealand and then made another deposit under a different name at the Bank of New South Wales. He was British and the right age, so “Mildoon” was placed under surveillance.
After a brief visit to Copenhagen, the man believed to be the absconding earl returned to Australia, right into the trap the police had laid for him. The story goes that the police tried to identify the alleged killer by checking for a scar on the inside of his right thigh. And so, on Christmas Eve, 1974, “Mildoon” was caught and ordered to take down his pants.
This is when the police received a terrible shock: the scar was missing.
As it turned out, the person they had apprehended was not the missing earl. But he was, in fact, another famous British personage, a politician who had faked his death just a short while earlier in the hopes of starting a new life in the land Down Under with his mistress.
The missing lord remains missing, but he’s the exception, not the rule.
Despite the challenges, plenty of people have tried to fake their deaths (or at least erase their public records) so they can have a fresh start. Quite a few of them were criminals, and a lot of them failed in embarrassing ways, but you can’t really fault them for trying.
Sometimes we all need a clean slate, especially, as Finn is about to learn, when whatever little you have is unexpectedly taken from you.
Let’s start with the Neighbour.
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