Bentley Dadmun

A Thousand Joys Bentley Dadmun

Slammed by fate and avarice, Olive Oglevee (A. K. A. Double O) is reduced to living in A Thousand Joys, a rundown resident hotel squatting on a corner deep in the wrong end of town. To supplement her social Security, she cleans the hotel and is mentor, teacher, and deputy mother to Greta Garbo Katsunori, the ten year old daughter of Divine Mother, owner and benign despot of the hotel. Things take a tentative turn for the better when Olive inherits the Lincoln Letters, six letters that Lincoln wrote to General Grant during the Civil War. The problem is the letters have been missing for over sixty years. Desperate for money, Olive investigates and learns that the letters were put in a time capsule and buried in the common of a town that no longer exists. She engages in more sleuthing, and during a raging thunderstorm, digs up the capsule. She lugs it back to the hotel, opens it, and discovers that the elements have turned the letters into a fetid mush. There are, however, three items that were not listed as being in the capsule: A gold headed hammer, six brass tokens, each with a clue to a puzzle, and a key case with several keys and a paper with cryptic numbers on it. Goaded on by Greta, and with Greta's lethal canine bodyguards in tow, they set out to solve the mystery of the three unlisted items and encounter murder, terror, and dubious justice.