Split Infinitives

It is late January 1930. This is the twenty-fourth Cyrus Skeen detective novel. It covers the time after Skeen has married Dilys Jones, his intrepid and lovely secretary, and after he has formed close friendships with Mickey Kane, Lieutenant Raggio, and Lieutenant Donovan. Sergeant Hieronymus, his ally in Beginnings, will be making a parting appearance. Linda Bolding, Lucy Wentz, and Clara Reyes, who figure largely over the next twenty cases, have yet to appear as his secretaries. Skeen meets the eccentric Dr. Willett Martin, who teaches psychology at Wexford College in San Francisco. Martin admires Skeen's "Trichotomy" article and wants to see if Skeen would cooperate in merging Skeen's thesis with his own ideas on recidivism. His star student, Roland Michalick, is also enthusiastic about the project. But then one of them is murdered, and Skeen is drawn into a psychological mystery. In December 1929 Skeen gave a lecture on "Trichotomy" at Wexford College, which also ended in murder, but at first he does not think the new murders had anything to do with that tragedy.