title: Hastened to the Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation
author:  Jack Olsen 
description: Jack Olsen's <i>Hastened to the Grave: The Gypsy Murder Investigation</i> features a delightful hero: a female private investigator who calls herself "Rat Dog Dick." Rat Dog relies on an ancient Everex 286 computer (Evil Evie), a Toyota Tercel (The Frog Prince) that is so outrageously green it's useless for surveillance, and a big, funny-looking dog (Beans). She is probably the best skip tracer (someone who finds people) in San Francisco. Once she gets her teeth into the "Foxglove" case--several old people who dwindle and die quickly after being "befriended" by a local Gypsy family--the fact that she has no client to pay her for her work is just not an issue. The police are ignoring clear evidence of elder abuse, and Rat Dog is outraged. We follow every step of her adventures as she learns a whole lot about Gypsies and turns into a fierce advocate for the elderly.
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  ![Cover](images/cover.png)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## The Gypsy
  
  
    
  
  
  ### Stephen Brust
  
  
  ### Megan Lindholm
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Part gritty urban police procedural and part horror fable, this enthralling
  fantasy/mystery examines issues of life, death, love and morality. A man
  without memory, known as the Gypsy, wanders the streets of Lakota, Ohio,
  leaving death in his wake. After a clerk is murdered during a holdup, the
  Gypsy is booked by cop Mike Stepovich, who uncharacteristicallydb pockets the
  suspect's strange knife, found nearby. An apparent snafu releases the Gypsy,
  who comes under suspicion again when a woman fortune teller is murdered in a
  cheap hotel. Stepovich, with the unvoiced disapproval of his brash young
  partner Durand, surreptitiously looks into the murders, now out of their
  jurisdiction, and finds himself walking down strange paths. Meanwhile a woman
  known as the Fair Lady is working her spells to draw others, including
  Stepovich's teenage daughter's friends, into her ev