The Crimson Cross

the long version

In Chicago, unemployed engineer Philip Hawkins is recruited by a quiet city detective, “Just Smith,” to pose as a boarder in a rough Roscommon Street house and investigate a string of apparent suicides by young women, all wearing the same small crimson Jerusalem cross. As Hawkins is drawn into the orbit of sinister hypnotist Dr. Antonio Facietti, crooked lawyer Algo Willcutts, and their weak-willed accomplice Bagby, he discovers that Frances Kenneday—a red-haired kindergarten teacher he once loved—is now the latest target because she unknowingly wears the stolen cross that hides directions to her late father’s buried Italian treasure. Racing between roof gardens, crowded streets, riverfront warehouses, and Facietti’s shadowy drugstore, Hawkins must outwit hypnosis, survive ambushes, decode the secret of “the Cross and the Book,” and rescue Frances from abduction and murder before the long-running conspiracy built around the crimson cross finally explodes.