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Electricity kills—and in all sorts of ways, in Bernadette Pajer's series featuring Seattle professor Benjamin Bradshaw, who moonlights as an electrical forensics investigator.
In this fourth book in the series, the great Thomas Edison comes to visit Bradshaw in the fall of 1903, in the hopes of getting information about a device that can transform direct current - an invention created by a former student, Oscar Daulton, who used it not for good, but for a murder. The device now sits at the bottom of Elliott Bay, and Bradshaw may be the person who knows most about it. But Bradshaw is hesitant to talk, not wanting to glorify an invention created by a madman.
A few months later, as Christmas approaches, electrician Vernon Doyle is found dead at the grand department store Bon Marché. His body was inside a window display, clutching a string of Edison's Christmas lights. Doyle's death is no accident, and there are several suspects—and motives—for his death. As Bradshaw investigates, alongside Det. Jim O'Brien, he finds a connection to Daulton's device. Edison, apparently, is not the only one seeking the secret to the deadly device, and Doyle had once been Daulton's confidant.
Bradshaw struggles with this case, unsure whether he can solve it. Likewise, his personal life is in turmoil. He wants to marry Missouri Fremont, the younger, modern and headstrong woman he met a few years ago. But she no longer believes in the Catholic faith, and Bradshaw is hesitant to marry outside his church. As well, Missouri has left Seattle to study homeopathy.
Pajer's books are always entertaining, and not just for the plot and great characters, but for the historical tidbits, from the Christmas shopping scenes to those newfangled inventions—like the typewriter, which is displayed at the store and which seems to attract children, leading a store manager to bemoan that it will ruin people's handwriting for generations to come.
This book, along with the others in the series, is a treat for those who like their mysteries with a dash of history.
§ Lourdes Venard is a newspaper editor in Long Island, N.Y.
Reviewed by Lourdes Venard, October 2014
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