"Texas Kinda Attitude"

This is my seventh or eighth story featuring Texas PI Helmut Erhard, depending on how you count. (The first six were "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "The Stopwatch of Death," "The Great Filling Station Holdup," "KLDI," "The Vampire Shift," and "Red Roses For a Blue Lady." "Murder on the North Pole Express," which was written to be #9 in the series, actually appeared in print before "Red Roses," and number eight, "The Land of Entrapment," written to be #8, should come out sometime in 2024.)

This time around, Helmut is hired by the proprietor of Hearne's laundromat to find out why her husband is stealing quarters from the Lavanderia's machines.

The detection here is admittedly pretty close to nonexistent, and EQMM editor Janet Hutchings agreed to buy the story as long as I didn't send her more in the series unless Helmut was given a more active investigatory role.

The title is -- like "The Yellow Rose of Texas," "The Great Filling Station Holdup," and "Red Roses For a Blue Lady" -- a song title, in this case a song by one of my all-time favorite singer/songwriters, Dan Hicks.

Once again, the story features a gigantic Easter egg, which has still never been spotted....

Late in 2025, Level Best Books published the first volume in a new series, The Best Private Eye Stories of the Year. The series -- edited by Michael Bracken, with this inaugural volume guest edited and introduced by Matt Coyle, includes twenty stories published in 2024, and at the back of the book there's an honor roll listing ten additional stories under the heading "Also Walking the Mean Streets." I was, well, honored to see "Texas Kinda Attitude" selected as one of Michael and Matt's ten Mean Streets walkers.

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