B is for Bacon & Eggs

 

Set back from the dual carriageway of Doncaster Road, Sanford, is Britannia Parade, a ramshackle row of shops harking back to the town’s glory days when the pit and the foundry worked at full capacity.

Sandwiched between Dennis’s Hardware & DIY and Patel’s Minimarket is The Lazy Luncheonette, a truckers café which has been Joe Murray’s home for his whole life. He was born here in the mid 1950s, when his father ran the place and it was known as Alf’s Café, the Murray family lived in the apartment above the café, and when Joe’s older brother Arthur emigrated to Australia sometime in the 1970s, it was down to Joe to maintain and eventually inherit the business. He has worked behind that counter ever since he left school: over forty years.

Joe had had other ambition. He wanted to be a policeman, but when he left school there were height restrictions. Men had to a minimum 5’8” tall, and Joe never aspired to anything beyond 5’6”. He has vented his irritation on everyone ever since.

The Lazy Luncheonette is a successful small business. With the passing of the coal mine and the foundry, and the coming of Sanford Retail Park, sited right behind the café, the clientele had changed but not diminished. These days, Joe and his crew cater for the draymen of the Sanford Brewery, the mechanics and administrators of Broadbent’s Auto Repairs on the industrial estate opposite, and the overspill of shoppers from the retail park.

Joe employs his nephew, Lee, as the cook. Lee, a gentle giant who was a useful prop for the Sanford Bulls Rugby League team before injury ended his career, is Arthur’s son, brought back from Australia when he was a child by his mother, and since then looked after by Joe.

The other two permanent member of the crew are Joe’s oldest friends, Sheila Riley and Brenda Jump, two widows who love making life hell for him, but would secretly march into hell to defend him. Along with Joe, the sometimes austere Sheila, with her intelligent analyses, and the fun-loving Brenda, with her homely observations, form the investigative triangle at the core of the STAC Mysteries.

And STAC itself? Its stands for The Sanford 3rd Age Club. Founded and managed by Joe, Sheila and Brenda, its 300+ members are never slow to travel and party, never slow to demonstrate that the best way to grow old is disgracefully.

And what of Joe, Sheila and Brenda? The 3rd Age Club gives them something to occupy their minds and free time, and usually tests their powers of observation and deduction whenever there is…

MURDER.

***

The STAC Mysteries are available as paperbacks and as e-book downloads in all formats, or direct from Crooked Cat Books in MOBI, EPUB and PDF formats