Meet Martyn Mustang The Gumshoe

Before there was the story of “The Gumshoe and The Dame” there was just “The Gumshoe.”  Every story has a beginning and this is Martyn’s.

During his years as a young adult in Detroit, Michigan he would help his friends, neighbors, family and associates out of tight situations.  He seemed to have a knack for this and everyone in the neighborhood knew it.  For a while he did this in return for favors and bartering.  As time went on more and more associates with difficult situations showed up at his doorstep, so he decided to charge a fee for his services.  At first he only made enough money to cover his expenses.

Later he thought that a better way of helping these individuals would be to become a lawyer.  He went to law school and quickly discovered it was not for him.  Some of his friends suggested, because of his physical fitness, that he should think about joining the police force.  So he tried that as well.  He enjoyed the training and he was good at hand to hand combat, but he never felt comfortable with carrying a gun everyday as a part of the job.  He’d rather settle a dispute with words or his fists and not with bullets.  So, needless to say he didn’t complete his training to become a police officer.  However, he knows that in his current profession there are times when a gun is more persuasive than words or fists.  He has a license to carry a gun; he just chooses to make using it his very last resort.

When Martyn started his job of investigating cases for some of the local Atlanta attorneys he was immediately labeled as a private eye or private investigator.  Martyn hates labels and he prefers to be thought of and respected simply as a hard working man.  Besides, labels are not his thing and he fought against this label by referring to himself as the gumshoe because he believes that he stands in a class by himself.  So because of Martyn’s stature within this small society as well as his physical stature, no one argued with him and his personal gumshoe label stuck.

Gumshoe is an old slang term from the 1920’s era for private eye.  Martyn is not that old.  As a kid he would watch old black and white movies with his dad and when he first heard the term gumshoe he thought it was cool.  Although he grew-up during the 80’s and he never missed an episode of Magnum PI, he had a special love for the old black and white detective movies.   Being a gumshoe rather than a private eye was his memorial to his fond childhood memories of his father. Memories of those days along with his father were gone. 

So, just like his last name, gumshoe stuck. How he got the last name, Mustang, is a story for another day.