"Mercer’s Law"

Available in EPUB and MOBI formats. Read on your Kindle, phone, tablet, computer and more

Washington, D.C., August 1945. The war is ending, the streets are celebrating, and Detective Sam Mercer is handed what should be a routine missing-person enquiry. A landlady reports her lodger missing. The woman has left behind her clothes, luggage, a handbag—and nearly five hundred dollars in grubby cash. Then Mercer finds the documents. Liesel Schmidt. Greta Hoffman. Evelyn Shaw. Three names, all apparently belonging to the same woman. What begins as straightforward police work draws Mercer into a trail of false identities, wartime intelligence and secrets that did not disappear with Germany’s surrender. Along the way he joins veteran detective Walter Hennessy and encounters recently blinded former OSS operative Arthur R. King—a man whose unusual instincts hint at a stranger world beyond Mercer’s familiar rules. Mercer’s Law is a standalone post-war mystery and an ideal entry point into The Spectral Detective Series, blending detective fiction, espionage, noir atmosphere and the first touch of the uncanny. Because Mercer has a law about coincidences: One happens. Two deserve attention. Three probably aren’t.