The P.I. and the Harvey Girls (ePub)

The Fred Harvey Company is one of the most successful companies in America. From small beginnings in Topeka, it now has hotels and eateries and newsstands at Santa Fe Railroad depots from Chicago to Los Angeles. Its menu is outstanding, and its waiters - actually, the men have been replaced with waitresses - are exceptional. Harvey Girls are the hallmark of the Fred Harvey Company, their reputation zealously guarded by The Tenth Legion, Fred Harvey's management team.

A number of robberies in the summer of 1928 puts their reputation at risk. If the public, which tends to suspect the worst of single working women, finds out how the Harvey Girls are abused during these heists, they will blame the Girls not the bandits, and the scandal could crumble Fred Harvey's hospitality empire. Kansas City private investigator, Lake Chancellor, a tough guy with a strange eye, is hired to stop the bandits and keep the robberies out of the newspapers. It's an impossible case, but Lake is armed with an active imagination and tracks the bandits to Vaughn, New Mexico. His Harvey Girl twin-sister Stormy and a stranded Charles Lindbergh offer their help, as do the Harvey Girls in the Las Chavez Hotel lunchroom. But catching the bandits is only part of the challenge. How can he bring them to trial without scandalous publicity about what the bandits have forced the Girls to do? The bandits aren't acting alone. There are powerful men in Santa Fe and Albuquerque behind them. Who are they? What is their intent? What's coming next?

The Private Investigator and the Harvey Girls is a fun look at the Harvey Girl phenomenon through the lens of the Roaring Twenties.