The yellow circle

the long version

In Williamsburg, Pennsylvania, well-bred amateur sleuth Foster Cole is drawn into a nationwide web of crime when heiress Dorothy Day vanishes from her own wedding rehearsal and a dead man marked “TRAITOR!” with a yellow circle turns up in an empty B Street house. Teaming with cool-headed Inspector Knowles Swift and wary detective Flint, Cole follows the cryptic symbol of the Yellow Circle from saloons and stone quarries to the shadowy studio of the unseen seer “Leporello,” uncovering a secret criminal order run by the ruthless, half-forgotten soldier Alessandro Cantarini. As messages, poisonings, and murders pile up—from the scarred thug Kelsey at McFerrens bar to Cole’s own abduction—suspicions tighten around Dorothy’s lawyer Lawrence Winterburn, her mysterious maid Marie Barbier, and three women who may know far more than they dare say. Racing between the city streets and the abandoned quarry north of town, Cole must outwit the Master of the Circle, expose the intermediary working inside Dorothy’s own household, and find the hidden place where she is held before the most powerful criminal organization in America silences its last witness.