The Dead Bell

The sprinkler washed over the remains of Faith Wesley, one of Lake Forest’s most prominent citizens, leaving few clues to go on—but the brutal murder of society’s privileged requires rigorous investigation. Tom Edison is called in. While he needs to answer to his higher-ups, he also has to deal with a relationship in tatters . . . it’s no wonder he falls prey to an illicit attraction to a close Wesley family friend. Haunted by demons of the past and unresolved challenges in his present, matters complicate further as he comes toe to toe with some of the most powerful people in Illinois and becomes the subject of an internal affairs investigation which reveals departmental corruption and an old unsolved murder case. In the process of his investigation, he uncovers truths about himself, his concept of justice, and ultimately exhumes his own ghosts.

". . . rarely have inventor and invention been better served than in this book." – New York Times Book Review Here, Edwin Grosvenor, American Heritage's publisher and Bell's great-grandson, tells the dramatic story of the race to invent the telephone and how Bell's patent for it would become the most valuable ever issued. He also writes of Bell's other extraordinary inventions: the first transmission of sound over light waves, metal detector, first practical phonograph, and early airplanes, including the first to fly in Canada. And he examines Bell's humanitarian efforts, including support for women's suffrage, civil rights, and speeches about what he warned would be a "greenhouse effect" of pollution causing global warming.