Some mysteries are better left unsolved. Some insurance claims are better left unpaid.

Max Payload has had enough of murder.

After a particularly unpleasant case involving five dead debutantes and an exceptionally ugly cat, the hard-boiled Boston private detective decides it’s time for a quieter line of work.

Life insurance.

His first assignment for Eternal Rest Mutual Life & Casualty seems simple enough. A fellow named Wilbur Whateley wants to collect $2,500 on his mother’s life insurance policy.

There’s just one problem.

Nobody can find the body.

Max drives to the isolated Massachusetts village of Dunwich, expecting to spend a couple of days interviewing witnesses and sorting out a suspicious claim.

Instead, he encounters a fifteen-year-old beneficiary who looks forty, a farmhouse with enormous doors on the second floor, and something upstairs that sounds like an ox dragging a piano.

Then there’s the university librarian who keeps warning him about an ancient book, the locals who communicate primarily by spitting tobacco juice, and the increasingly disturbing possibility that the Whateley family has been hiding something considerably larger than an insurance fraud.

Max has investigated murderers, liars, and lunatics. But he’s never investigated anything quite like this.

And all he wanted was a nice, quiet job with a steady paycheck.

Inspired by H. P. Lovecraft’s classic tale of cosmic horror, Max Payload Meets the Dunwich Horror is a hard-boiled detective mystery that combines supernatural terror, outrageous characters, and the sort of dark humor that would make Raymond Chandler reach for another drink.

The insurance investigator in Max says there’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation.

The former private detective in him says the insurance investigator is an idiot.

Welcome to Dunwich.

A Crooked Smile Press publication. Where Wit Leaves a Mark.