Overview

Philadelphia - September, 1785. Benjamin Franklin is certain of Quaker stonecutter Jacob Maul's innocence, despite the fact that Maul has been jailed for murder after a second woman is found dead on his property with bruises to her throat. Franklin also knows that if he gets involved in proving Maul's innocence he'll never be left alone -- everyone in Philadelphia will seek his help with their troubles. So in strictest secrecy he recruits Revolutionary War veteran Captain James Jamison to be his legman. No one must know that he and Jamison are even acquainted. The reader accompanies Jamison as his pursuit of the killer leads him through Philadelphia's markets, taverns and slums, and as far afield as the university at Princeton and a farming community where everyone speaks German. Questioning informants as varied as a free black washerwoman, former Hessian mercenaries, and the midwives of Southwark, Captain Jamison discovers pivotal information with the help of his French grandmother's comely maid, Livy, and makes progress both in the investigation and in healing from the war wounds, both physical and emotional, that he carries. Meeting with Jamison in the dead of night, Franklin applies his extraordinary analytical abilities to the facts Jamison has gathered. But will Franklin's genius meet the perpetrator's challenge in the story's climactic showdown? Benjamin Franklin and the Quaker Murders is the first in a series of historical detective novels set in Philadelphia featuring Benjamin Franklin.

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An illustrious Founding Father adds supersleuth to his resume in McElroy's ... well-researched historical novel. ... An entertaining, educational mystery that neatly bridges the gap between fact and fiction. - Kirkus Reviews McElroy's idea [for this novel] is an original one, and his plot engaging -- Chronicles Benjamin Franklin & The Quaker Murders by John Harmon McElroy is a mystery rich in details about Franklin's life and 18th-century Philadelphia, which in 1785 was the world's largest English-speaking city after London. -- The Sons of the American Revolution Magazine

Author Information

John Harmon McElroy was born and raised in a small town in Pennsylvania and helped put himself through college by working in its glass factory. Two of his ancestors fought for American independence. Having graduated with a bachelor's degree from Princeton and a doctorate from Duke, he taught American Literature at the university level for 35 years, including two appointments as Fulbright Professor of American Studies at universities in Spain and Brazil. He created and taught for many years a course called Literature of the Early Republic, which included the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. In the early 1990s he and his Cuban-born wife, Onyria Herrera McElroy, also a PhD, planned and - with the help of the U.S. and Spanish governments - planted a grove of 500 redwood trees on the rainy northwest coast of Spain (Galicia) to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Columbus's world-changing voyage of discovery. Professor McElroy has edited a history of Columbus, compiled a diary-like narrative from Walt Whitman's scattered prose writings on his Civil War experiences, and written five books on American cultural history.

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