Beginnings: A Detective Novel of 1928

by Edward Cline

It is early October, 1928. In a case that predates China Basin, and before he and Dilys Jones are married, and before he meets Mickey Kane, the newspaper reporter, and many of the series’ regular characters, the private detective investigates the murder of a China Basin warehouse owner, Wallace Briggs, whose death baffles the man’s sister and the police. Skeen develops a working relationship with Detective Sergeant Hieronymus of the Mission District precinct. Wallace Briggs had no known enemies, except for his ex-wife, Flora Pritchard, a chorus girl and career goldbricker. Skeen has already established a reputation for solving tough crimes, but the murder of Briggs stymies him for a while. Skeen meets Briggs’s sister, Candice. He also meets the shady characters who run Pacific Horizons, a shipping broker with offices on the China Basin docks to whom Briggs was in debt. Skeen does not get to meet Flora Pritchard, Wallace's ex-wife; he discovers her body in her apartment. Skeen determines there is an unholy alliance between many of the principal characters. And he begins to take an interest in Dilys Jones, his reserved and efficient secretary. Beginnings is a "prequel" to the first Skeen novel, China Basin. .

125 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 22, 2016

About the author

Edward Cline is an American novelist and essayist. He is best known for his Sparrowhawk series of novels, which take place in England and Virginia before the American Revolutionary War. He is also the author of First Prize and Whisper the Guns. Outside of his work as a novelist, Cline is known for his writings on esthetics and his defense of capitalism and of free speech. As a writer, his strongest influence has been the philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand. Currently, he is a policy analyst for the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism. He lives in Yorktown, Virginia.





from wikipedia.com