Edward Cline

A Crimson Overture: a Detective Novel of 1930 Edward Cline

Publisher Marketing: In this fifth adventure of Cyrus Skeen, private detective and socialite in San Francisco, it is January 1930, the end of the Roaring Twenties and the beginning of the "Red Decade," when Soviet spies and Communist fellow travelers have begun to infiltrate the government and other institutions in large numbers. 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. In the previous Skeen case, The Chameleon, the intrepid and cosmopolitan detective uncovers and dissolves a Nazi Bund in a university town near San Francisco, while in The Daedalus Conspiracy, he journeys north to a Redwood Forest to foil the assassination of a U. S. Senator. In this latest exploit, Skeen tangles with J. Edgar Hoover's Bureau of Investigation, irascible police detectives and newspapermen, and ruthless Soviet agents hurrying to cover up their depredations before the British spy's secrets are revealed to the authorities. 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.