Edward Cline

Stolen Words: a Detective Novel of 1929 Edward Cline

Publisher Marketing: It is June, 1929. The Roaring Twenties are still "roaring" but the period is doomed. San Francisco's celebrated Cyrus Skeen, private detective, and scion of Eastern wealth, is secure in his solvency; he has never bought stock on margin. He is as finicky about what stocks to invest in as he is in the kind of client he is willing to accept and work for. Soon after his case in The Head of Athena, he is approached by Susan Harker, wife of Hosanna Harker, a noted local novelist accused of murdering his publisher, Marc Pearson, who has apparently pirated many of Harker's novels and sold them under other titles and names. Mrs. Harker wants Skeen to prove that her husband did not murder the publisher. But soon after that visit, another woman, Anya Spearitt, demands that Skeen to prove that Hosanna Harker did indeed murder her ex-husband. Skeen does not balk at the challenge; he senses that something is terribly amiss. A third woman calls on Skeen, and asks him not to get involved at all. Skeen visits the jailed novelist and is almost sorry that he took on the case; Hosanna Harker is a very nasty person. Skeen rifles through a catalogue of miscreants, malcontents, and suspects, and by the end of Stolen Words, isolates the true murderer. Plagiarism isn't the only wrongdoing Skeen encounters, but thieves exploiting each other's thieving, and a crew of philandering pragmatists. It's a conundrum only Cyrus Skeen can resolve in his own inimitable way. Contributor Bio:  Cline, Edward Edward Cline is the author of two detective series and one suspense series, in addition to a six-title collection of his political and cultural columns. Silver Screens is the eighth in his series featuring Cyrus Skeen, a private detective in 1920's and 1930's San Francisco. A second detective series features Chess Hanrahan, in modern times, another private eye who specializes in solving moral paradoxes and the murders behind them. Cline has also written Sparrowhawk, a popular six-title historical series of novels set in England and Virginia in the pre-Revolutionary period. His articles and reviews have been published in The Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, the Colonial Williamsburg Journal, and Marine Corps League, and numerous other print publications. His political, critical, and cultural columns can be found on the weblogs of Rule of Reason, Capitalism Magazine, Family Security Matters and other venues. In this latest Skeen caper, the intrepid private detective wrangles with a Hollywood starlet and an ambitious and ruthless politician.