Showing results by author "Edward Cline" in All Categories

The American Revolution did not just happen. It was the culmination of two centuries of Enlightenment ideas that entered men's minds and were refined and honed until they expressed themselves in an unprecedented rejection of tyranny in the name of individual rights and political freedom from the whims of arrogant monarchs and conniving, power-lusting politicians.

It is fall,1759. The saga of Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick moves to Caxton, a small trading town on the York River in Virginia, some miles up the wide river from Yorktown. Jack Frake, after having served his eight-year indenture, is a successful tobacco planter, having inherited his property from his former master, with whom he formed a close father-son relationship. He married the master's daughter, but she and her son died in childbirth.

British friends of colonial rights fight to defeat the Stamp Act in Parliament in 1765, led by Dogmael Jones. In the meantime Patrick Henry takes the floor, advocates the rights of the colonies to self-governance without interference from the Crown, and denounces the Stamp Act. Hugh Kenrick, now a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses, helps Henry voice the opposition.

In Part One, Cyrus Skeen, private detective in 1929 San Francisco, is asked by Charles Gilchrest, chairman of The Daedàlus Society, an exclusive men-only club, to go to the The Daedàlus Grove, a private enclave north of the city, to determine the nature of some trouble he has been warned about in a cryptic note written by an anonymous member. The note alludes to a controversial Senator from Nebraska and a tariff bill in Congress. It may the overture to a prank or it may be a serious threat to the man's life.

Rational Scrutiny: Paradoxes and Contradictions in Detective Fiction discusses why Chess Hanrahan and Cyrus Skeen, the author's premier heroes and the chief subjects of this volume, are not only extraordinary men of action, but “intellectuals” of the first rank, as well. As Cline writes in the Preface, detective fiction, as a rule, employs both "intellectuals" and "doers".

Jack Frake and Hugh Kenrick resign themselves to the likelihood of war with the Crown. Hugh returns to England on urgent personal business, while Jack prepares for the coming conflict. In the meantime, Jared Turley, an agent of Earl Basil Kenrick, posing as a Customs official, sets his sights on Hugh Kenrick to punish in the name of his employer. He allies himself with the detested new royal governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, and confiscates the Sparrowhawk.

A Hollywood producer visits Skeen's office and promises him the moon if he would agree to allow his persona and cases be used for some new movies, possibly starring William Powell or Ronald Colman. Skeen expresses no interest and asks the man to leave. next day a friend brings him a news clipping about a major Hollywood studio negotiating with him over the rights to his past cases to produce a series of detective films - all talkies.

During a Nob Hill society party, Skeen and his painter wife, Dilys, befriend a beautiful sculptress who turns out to be a British spy carrying important information about the extent of that infiltration in American and British governments. In A Crimson Overture, one thing leads to another, and soon Skeen is enmeshed in a conspiracy to silence him and anyone else with knowledge of the scale of espionage and treason in both countries.

We Three Kings is about how a single man, moved by the moral principle that one's life and property are one's own, can foil the faceless enablers and defeat a vicious conspiracy to deny him his property and his life. At issue is the possession of a rare gold coin, a British £5 Queen Una, given to Fury by a man whose life he saved.

It's August, 1929. Fresh and rested from his case in The Daedàlus Conspiracy in July, which took him to the Daedàlus Grove in Northern California to foil an assassination attempt, Cyrus Skeen hires a new secretary, the promisingly capable Clara Reyes. Soon after that, he's approached by a man, Bruce Willowman, who wishes him to try to find the murderer of his younger brother, Beauregard, in San Francisco five years before.

In this episode of Skeen's cases he is invited by a new political party to stand for the office of public defender in next month's city election, a city office established to provide legal representation to the poor and indigent. He declines the invitation, but strange things keep happening, such as the curious death of the current public defender and the odd behavior of the principals of the new party.

As the British Crown plans to exact its Stamp Tax on the North American colonies, Hugh Kenrick, Jack Frake, and their friends in Caxton, Virginia, plot to foil the arrival of the hated stamps in the colony. Edgar Cullis and George Mercer, also Virginians, however, scheme to switch sides. Reverdy Brune returns to Hugh's life, and Etáin, Jack's wife, acquires a new friend.

The Sparrowhawk Companion has become an indispensable reference book for readers of the Sparrowhawk series, containing, in addition to essays by the author and other contributors about the series and period in which it is set , a chronology of Acts of Parliament from 1650 onward up until the conclusion of the American Revolution, a glossary of 18th century terms encountered in the series, a handy list of the 375 characters that appear in the story, a list of all the naval and merchant vessels, and a selective bibliography of some of the author's sources.

It is November, 1929. The stock market has crashed. The Roaring Twenties are about to end. But Cyrus Skeen, private detective, is not too concerned. He never bought on margin or gambled on "sure things" to make a quick buck; his wealth is secure. But many businessmen and investors made that mistake and have been bankrupted. Ruined, some have committed suicide. But not all have jumped from their office windows to end it all. Lucian Maxey, president of Maxey Motors in San Francisco, seems to have committed suicide by putting a gun to his head.

Chess Hanrahan is the chief of police of Auberley, a university town in Massachusetts. He is a former New York City police detective who resigned after being blamed by a district attorney for the "unnecessary" death of a criminal in a gun fight. Auberley seemed to be a sanctuary from the politics and irrationality of the big city. Hanrahan admits to himself that he accepted the job in Auberley to lick his wounds. It was quiet, sedate, not much of a challenge. But then a philosophy professor is murdered.

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. He is approached by Susan Harker, wife of Hosanna Harker, a noted local novelist accused of murdering his publisher, Marc Pearson.

Book Two introduces the second young hero, Hugh Kenrick, a member of the British aristocracy. While he has all the advantages that his rank bestows on him – family, wealth, prestige, and an assured future – his quest to preserve his self identity, his liberty, and his independence clashes violently with the demands of his station.

Cyrus Skeen, private detective, scours 1928 San Francisco in search of the man who stole a priceless medieval artifact. The thief, who is also a pathological killer, is not Skeen's only obstacle. The exquisite Frenchwoman and retured British colonel who are searching for the artifact also prove to be obstructions. Helping him in his search is his loyal and adoring secretary, Dilys Jones. Complicating the search are two Yale classmates, one of whom has penned a hit play that is headed for Broadway, but who has a secret about its true authorship. This is the other side of Sam Spade's San Francisco.

The time of The Circles of Odin is early September, 1929, after Skeen's case of the Daedàlus Society in July and before he discovers in November a Nazi Bund in Palo Alto, south of San Francisco, Skeen's main venue of his adventures.

After having some breathing room from his last case, which brought him up against Islamic operatives in San Francisco in The Black Stone, Cyrus Skeen and his wife take a short vacation on a luxury bus, the Pickwick Stage. But the bus is held up by gangsters. Skeen goes into action and foils the hijacking. But his heroism engenders even more problems and perils.