The Spectrum, A Novel

In the second installment of the Pittsburgh Historical Mystery Series, it is 1846 and the United States is at war with its neighbor to the south. Parading soldiers and military bands fill Pittsburgh's streets with martial airs. But the dead bodies turning up in the city's back alleys have nothing to do with glorious victory in battle. The victims are the poorest of the poor, the flotsam and jetsam from the shores of Europe. City Constable John Parker is again at odds with his boss about who is doing the killing and why. Butler believes the murders to be directly related to the warriors who fill his city, but Parker suspects the answer may lie in a different battle, a dark struggle within America itself, whose outcome will determine the identity of a nation. But if Parker is to find the killer and prevent more murders, he must first take seriously warnings that he, now, has become the target.