Philadelphia, 1886. The Centennial Exposition has the city giddy with progress—electric lights, steam engines, and Doctor Horatio Peabody’s miraculous Elixir of Vigor, guaranteed to restore youth and vitality to even the most withered soul.
When Judge William Winthrop drops dead during Peabody’s public demonstration, everyone calls it a tragic accident. Everyone except his widow.
Eleanor Winthrop hires Junius Price and Archibald McNittle, former Pinkerton agents now scraping by as independent detectives, to find the hand that turned her husband’s glass into a weapon. The case should be straightforward: identify the poisoner, collect the fee, return to their usual diet of divorce work and missing dogs.
But Junius and Archie don’t do straightforward.
Their investigation uncovers a conspiracy that threads through Philadelphia’s power structure like rot through timber. Mechanical coroners falsifying death certificates. City officials taking bribes to look the other way. A shipping magnate with blood on his books and a Harbor Master pulling strings in the dark. The deeper they dig, the more dangerous the ground becomes—until their office is ransacked, their evidence destroyed, and Junius himself snatched by the very men they’re hunting.
With the Mayor’s Gala looming and a fresh corpse certain to follow, Archie must navigate police who want him arrested, criminals who want him dead, and an antidote that might arrive too late. All while carrying the weight of a partnership that has survived dismissal, poverty, and every attempt to break it.
Some mysteries are solved with deduction. Others require a stubborn refusal to abandon your partner, even when the fog closes in and the docks offer nothing but cold water and silence.
The Clockwork Coroner continues with a detective duo for readers who like their mysteries twisty, their banter sharp, and their loyalty bone-deep.
| Detectives For Hire Series | USD ($) |
| The Clockwork Coroner (Available June 1, 2026) | $19.99 |
(Pre-order before June 1, 2026) | |
Also available as an eBook on Amazon Kindle – $8.99
The first book of the Detectives For Hire series!
The port town of Darien, Georgia, 1881.
When a caller reports murder at the Crowe’s Nest Boarding House, Pinkerton detectives Junius Price and Archibald McNittle expect another routine case in a town that resents their Northern presence. What they find is a mystery as tangled as the victim’s past.
Madame Crowe was no ordinary boarding house proprietor. A German stowaway who survived the crossing, she was sold into a brothel, developed a crippling opium addiction, and clawed her way free to build her own empire. Her Crowe’s Nest made enemies of the town’s established madam, attracted the obsessive attention of shipping magnate Clayton “Big Clay” Baron, and drew the ire of his vengeful wife. She borrowed money she couldn’t repay from a ruthless loan shark, and her opium supplier had his own reasons to silence her.
As Price and McNittle employ period detective work and their experimental McNittle-Price Lie Detection Device, they discover that Crowe’s murder was not the work of a single hand. Multiple perpetrators, each with their own motives, converged on that bloody room. The investigation reveals the tragic architecture of a woman’s desperate rise and brutal fall, but the full truth remains just out of reach.
The Murder of Crowe is a steampunk-infused historical mystery that asks whether justice is possible when everyone is guilty of something.
Also available as an eBook on Amazon Kindle – $8.99
Napkin Nights: The Crunk Chronicles is the story of two young guys living it up in the Seattle club scene. This historical fiction story is written in mostly “street” slang and lingo that is delicately blended with standard English. The two guys are; the older yet not street wise Derek, and his younger friend, Juan. Please join them as they hit the streets of the Seattle to find crazy adventures and perhaps find themselves as well.
Details
Publication Date: Jan 25, 2016
Language: English
ISBN: 9781329844834
Category: Entertainment
Copyright: All Rights Reserved – Standard Copyright License
Contributors By (author): Carlos Bayne
Also available as an eBook on Amazon Kindle – $8.99
The Clockwork Coroner 