The Axel Files

Little Frankie Darling wants revenge, Asami Sato wants her inheritance, and Oyabun Kitsune wants the magic artifact hidden in the 150-year-old cherrywood box. They each pay investigator, Axel Webb, to find the box, but things are not always what they seem, and people always lie to conceal their secret agendas.

What would you do to be rich? Not just rich, but fabulously rich. Perhaps you are that unique soul that has no dreams, no aspirations, no agenda…. Well, if you are, good luck. It must be a very dreary existence. But if you’re like the rest of us, you have a fantasy, a vision of what could be, of what you could be. Maybe that dream is selfish, or maybe it’s altruistic, or maybe...it’s extremist. What if there was a family jewel, an exquisite 133-carat pink piece of perfection, a diamond that historically belonged to you, and what if that gem was stolen?

English artist Alice Bulbeck and her twin brother, Edward, approach Axel Webb to find a lost Shakespeare play entitled The History of Cardenio. The play, performed only once for James I, has been lost for 400 years. It wasn’t included in the 1623 First Folio published by Shakespeare’s friends after his death. It is the only known play credited to William Shakespeare that has never been published. The question is, why?

Investigator Axel Webb is hired by a Japanese Naichō Agent on the recommendation of his Yakuza friend, Hibiki Sato, to find the Honjō Masamune katana that was last seen in 1945 when it was taken from a Mejiro Police Station by a US Army sergeant. The sergeant’s name was recorded by the police in Japanese.

On Christmas Eve, 1984, two Mexican veterinarian dropouts broke into the Museo Nacional del Antropologia. They stole over one hundred ancient Mayan treasures found in the tomb of K’inich Janaab’ Pakal, a discovery that rivals Tutankhamun in beauty, wealth, and cultural significance. The burglary became known as the El Robo del Siglo: The Theft of the Century.

In my business, you meet all kinds of people; some, let’s call them civilians, are ordinary, what the politicians call “folks;” then there are the characters, the peculiar sorts, people with strange peccadilloes: what an old friend of mine might call, “people who scare the horses.” Some, let's call them “the desperate:” come to me because they find themselves in a situation, sometimes of their own making and other times… well… let’s just say, imposed upon them. In each case, they have secrets.