Case Files
NEW! The da Vinci Staircase
The da Vinci Staircase (French)
Scent of a Killer
The Purloined Love
Death by Analysis
My Adventures
Notes
Follow-up on my friends and acquaintances from The Adventures of Inspector Canal. Click here
Death by Analysis
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Another Adventure from Inspector Canal's New York Agency
What do you do when a charming young analyst-in-training keels over dead in front of three hundred guests at her Institute’s annual shindig and it looks like murder? You ask around, naturally! But what if initial inquiries by the men in blue suggest she was liked by one and all: her teachers, supervisors, fellow-students, and even patients? New York’s finest have no choice but to call on me to penetrate the calm demeanor of the dead woman’s professional entourage and loosen their tongues, using at least one of those tricks that card-carrying detectives are not allowed to use: plying suspects with drinky poohs.
More daring than ever, changing identities and donning the most unlikely of disguises before, during, and even after a madcap Halloween party, I feel my way through a minefield of denials and dissimulations, trying not to trigger any further murders—especially my own, because things do get dicey! As usual, I get a ringside seat to the misadventures of Eros while attempting to solve crimes of the heart, grappling with the biggest mysteries of them all: love and death.
The Adventures of Inspector Canal
3 Mysteries
Those pesky NYPD detectives just can’t seem to leave me to my reading, tickling the ivories, and invigorating jogs in Central Park. They keep tempting me to solve their problems for them, dangling before me tantalizing crimes like those reported by eccentric personalities like Rolland Saalem, music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, and involving prominent nutcases like Tobias Trickler, Mayor of New York City, and Sandra Errand, the stunningly lovely vice president for North American sales at YVEH Distributors of Spirits. I have to admit that I just can’t resist it when the people caught up in these capers are cultured, wacko, or gorgeous (too bad they are rarely all three at once!) . . .
In “The Case of the Lost Object,” the overachieving conductor of the fancy schmancy New York Philharmonic becomes obsessed about the theft from his Lincoln Center office of the slow movement from a precious original musical score. He and I drink some fabulous wines, travel to Steel City (a.k.a. Pittsburgh), of all places, and discover some crazy things that went on during World War II (nothing macabre, of course).
In “The Case of the Pirated Formula,” an obnoxious but ravishing businesswoman is determined to stop a Chinese counterfeit version of one of the liqueurs her company distributes—that famous green libation known as Chartreuse—from flooding the American market. Sparks fly between us, we almost die in a car accident, and there’s even a high-speed chase scene, but we end up in one of the calmest places under the sun (or, rather, under the snow): a remote, thousand-year-old monastery way up in the French Alps.
And in “The Case of the Liquidity Squeeze,” the sex life of the golden-boy mayor of the Big Apple becomes fodder for public consumption and derision—yes, he was dumb enough to get photographed visiting a “massage parlor” and then was accused of paying for his deep body rubs from public coffers. He and his cronies have a hard time (if only they could when they want to!) digging their way out of the Great Recession, and I do my best to help set their love lives back on track . . . while helping myself to a priceless painting (hey, I never claimed to be a boy scout!).
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