Coming Clean: a Detective Ink story

by Terry Persun

After Fred Lancing retired from the Air Force, he took a peaceful job as janitor at New York City’s top detective agency, Detective Ink. When one of the detectives hands Fred a case as a cruel joke, Fred’s boredom with his job and his life gets the best of him. Denying all the dangers and problems he might find himself engaged in, Fred elects to see if he can solve the case.

The entire collection of the Detective Ink interlocking stories can be found in one package. The PRIME FIVE authors include Jeff Ayers, Mimzi Schradi, Michael Hiebert, Susan Wingate, and Terry Persun.

113 pages, Paperback

Published June 5, 2015

About the author

Terry Persun is a former airborne navigation equipment specialist and electronics engineer presently freelancing for science and technology magazines. He has won nine awards for his fiction and was a finalist in another seven awards—IPPY, Book Excellence, Foreword Reviews, USABookNews, and others. Terry is a multi-genre author of intelligent, tech-forward fiction with clearly drawn characters and thought-provoking themes. You can find him at www.TerryPersun.com

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LIST OF MY BOOKS
Science Fiction: Biomass series:
BIOMASS: Rewind
BIOMASS: Sky People (coming soon)
BIOMASS: Alive (coming soon)
Science Fiction: Neal and Mavra series:
Revision 7: DNA
Backyard Aliens
Science Fiction: Tempest Eugene Nesbit series:
The Killing Machine
The Humanzee Experiments
Science Fiction Stand-Alones
Hear No Evil
Cathedral of Dreams

Fantasy: Doublesight series
Doublesight
Memory Tower
Fugitives
Gargoyle
Fantasy: Shaman Detective series
The NSA Files
The Voodoo Case
Stealing Childhood

Mystery/Suspense: Stand-Alones:
Coming Clean
Mistake In Identity
Man Behind the Door

Historical Novel: Stand-Alones:
Sweet Song
Ten Months in Wonderland

Magical Realism: Stand-Alones:
The Witness Tree
Wolf's Rite
Giver of Gifts
To Our Waking Souls

General Fiction: Stand-Alones:
The Perceived Darkness
Deception Creek

Poetry:
Horse Logic
Balancing Act
Navigating Wind
Broken Fingers
Beautys Run Road
Sentences
And Now This
Every Leaf
Barn Tarot

Reviews

[Jason Pryde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Terry Persun writes all kinds of books, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, etc. He has been writing a long time.
Not everything he writes is going to move the reader into a new realm.
There was nothing technically wrong with this story. The chapters were concise reports to the plot development.
The characters were believable. The moral of the story was explicit in the title.
There just wasn’t a lot of there…there for me.
I got annoyed by the ongoing internal conflict that the protagonist presented and his failure to resolve the discrepancies between his current life and his past career.
His passive acknowledgement that his employers and his wife just walk over him leaves me despising him as a person,
even if he did eventually stumble on an outcome to the primary conflict of the story.
I take this book as more of an etude in character development than a pot boiler mystery novel.
Thus three stars, an outlier in the authors larger repertoire.

[Brian Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fred Lansing is not your typical detective. Although he works at the Detective Ink agency, he is not an investigator. He is their janitor. A retired military man with a wife facing the challenges of menopause, he finds that he misses doing work that he believes to be important. He needs the job, but he expected more from life. So, he begins investigating an accident that could be murder. Worried that his impersonation of a detective will be discovered and that he will lose his job or worse, he doggedly—though amateurishly—pursues the truth. Along the way, he learns as much about himself and his marriage as he does about the crime.

A well-crafted tale, Coming Clean is a fast read that will linger long in memory.

[P.S. Winn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Motive, motive, motive. Although he is a janitor, Fred Lancing is so much more. Now, Fred is looking into a mysterious death. I found, although though this is a short story, it has a lot to offer. The author does a great job packing a lot of story into a little place. Looking into murder can be dangerous business, the author handles it well.

[Michael Nethery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well, this was certainly a great fun read! Also an excellent life reinforcement for us retired folks. Yes, it is nice to feel important but hey, just getting a few things done are really cool too!
An easy short read that was fun! Who can ask for anything better
Michael

[Celeste Dougherty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Worth reading

This is a great quick read. It’s a story of a man who’s no longer sure about the path his life is taking. He’s gingerly stepping into the detective world while navigating a rocky relationship with his menopausal wife.

[P.S. Winn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although he is a janitor, Fred Lancing is so much more. Now, Fred is looking into a mysterious death. I found, although though this is a short story, it has a lot to offer. The author does a great job packing a lot of story into a little place. Looking into murder can be dangerous business, the author handles it well.