The Edison Effect

Inventor Thomas Alva Edison is also a ruthless businessman, intent on furthering his patents and General Electric and beating rivals like Nikola Tesla and Westinghouse. Edison has agents in place in Seattle but he;s come himself in pursuit of a mysterious invention lost in 1901 in Elliott Bay. When Edison asks for information, few refuse. But not University of Washington Professor Benjamin Bradshaw who;s earned a reputation as a private investigator where science"electricity"is concerned. Bradshaw hopes that the lost device, one conceived in anger by an anarchist and harnessed for murder, will elude Edison;s hired divers. Soon, one December morning, 1903, the Bon Marché;s Department Store electrician is found dead in the Men;s Wear window clutching a festoon of Edison;s new holiday lights. Bradshaw believes Edison has set a dangerous game in motion. Motives multiply as the dead man;s secrets surface alongside rivalries at the Bon Marché. Bradshaw, his sleuthing partner Henry Pratt, and the Seattle PD;s Detective O;Brien pursue leads, but none spark Bradshaw;s intuition. His heart is not in the investigation but in a courtship that will force him to defy his Catholic faith or lose his beloved, Missouri. Then a crossroads in the case forces him to face his personal fears and his first professional failure. Whatever the outcomes, his life is about to change¦.