Showing results by author "Dan Andriacco" in All Categories

Murder Among SupervillainsAs a professor of popular culture in his day job, amateur sleuth Sebastian McCabe knows a bit about superheroes, supervillains, and the various graphic novel universes. But that's not much help when murder strikes at the Tri-State Comic Book Expo. Potential suspects number in the thousands, including some A-list Hollywood actors as well as comic book professionals and a collector. It all begins with Erin, Ohio-based artist-writer Parker Williams, creator of the superhero Red Falcon, being accused of plagiarizing the character of his newest supervillain, Queen Bee.

When popular mystery writer Sebastian McCabe agreed to take part in a literary debate in London, he had no clue that he would wind up as both investigator and suspect in the strangest case of his amateur sleuthing career. Arthur James Phillimore, investment guru to the stars and member of an elite Sherlock Holmes society, steps back into his home to fetch an umbrella one rainy day and is never seen alive again. The mystery is eerily evocative of one of Dr. Watson’s most famous untold tales, the disappearance of Mr. James Phillimore. But this Phillimore soon reappears - dead.

This is the startling question that Jeff Cody and his wife, Lynda, hear during a wedding reception on the first night of the QueenCon mystery conference in Cincinnati. Not only are the whispered words unnerving, there is no one nearby to have spoken them.

"The world is big enough for us," Sherlock Holmes once told Dr. Watson. "No ghosts need apply." But amateur sleuth Sebastian McCabe and his chronicler Jeff Cody don't have a choice when a popular TV reality show comes to Erin, Ohio, to record a Halloween special about the entity disturbing a local gastropub known as The Speakeasy. Jackie O'Brien was a bootlegger and speakeasy owner gunned down in 1920. Ever since, his unquiet spirit has been said to haunt the building where it happened — one which, after many transformations over the years, is once again a speakeasy of sorts.

When Erin, Ohio native Jamie Ellicott returns home as best-selling author James Ivanhoe after a 13-year absence, it’s like the return of the Prodigal Son. His ill and aging father welcomes him with open arms. Ivanhoe’s two brothers, however, are less forgiving. The whole town gets drawn into the family drama when Ivanhoe seeks to march in the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade under the banner of an anti-technology group called the Ned Ludd Society. That’s a thumb in the collective eye of his siblings, who own a company that makes microcircuits.

An "Old Money" Family Meets MurderShakespearean scholar and philanthropist Ezra Bainbridge, patriarch of one of Erin, Ohio's wealthiest old families, lives quietly and happily at his Stratford Court compound with three triplet daughters until accusations of elder abuse roil the family. Amateur sleuth Sebastian McCabe and his friend Jeff Cody are drawn into the controversy as objective observers but are soon ensnared in a puzzling series of horrendous murders, each one of which is marked by the presence of a flower.

Small town controversies can be murder. When a newcomer to Erin, Ohio, proposes to tear down the historic Bijou Theater and erect in its place a boutique hotel, Sebastian McCabe adds “civic activist” to a long resume that already includes magician, mystery writer, professor, and amateur sleuth. With the strategic help of brother-in-law Jeff Cody, Mac launches a far-reaching campaign to “Save the Bijou.”

Pages Gone By is more than just the only used book store in Erin, Ohio. It’s also a favorite meeting place for writers and readers. And early one morning, it becomes the scene of a murder, when a body is found in the romance section. As polymath mystery writer Sebastian McCabe and sardonic sidekick Jeff Cody try to unmask the murderer of a friend, they get more help than they need from a talk-show psychologist and a group of would-be mystery writers with more imagination than deductive skills.

Writer-actor-director Peter Gerard's latest film was a smash hit, but some fans of Sherlock Holmes were outraged. Why? Because 221 B Bourbon Street portrayed the beloved detective as a goateed, saxophone-playing Southern American working in 1920s New Orleans!

The Investigating Arthur Conan Doyle and Sherlock Holmes Colloquium and donation of the third-largest private collection of Sherlockiana in the world were supposed to produce a weekend of great publicity for tiny St. Benignus College in Erin, Ohio. But when theft and murder come to campus, college Public Relations Director Jeff Cody finds himself knee-deep in Sherlockian suspects, besieged by an aggressive reporter he loves but no longer dates, and competing with his eccentric brother-in-law, Sebastian McCabe, to solve the crimes first.

A diverse collection of Sherlock Holmes related writings including several essays, short stories, and two radio plays. Andriacco's obsession with matters Sherlockian is obvious, and there is much here for Sherlock Holmes fans to enjoy.

London, 1920: Boston-bred Enoch Hale, working as a reporter for the Central News Syndicate, arrives on the scene shortly after a music-hall escape artist is found hanging from the ceiling in his dressing room. What at first appears to be a suicide turns out to be murder...the first of several using the same modus operandi. What's the connecting factor among all the victims? Or isn't there one? That's what the dogged journalist Hale aims to find out.

As chief spokesperson for St. Benignus University in small-town Erin, Ohio, Jeff Cody's job responsibilities include handling “crisis communications.” And a crisis it is when veteran journalist Maggie Barton calls Jeff on the day after Thanksgiving. She wants the whole story about a dean forced to step down because of complaints of inappropriate behavior from three women who worked for him. But that's just the overture to double murder at SBU, taxing the abilities of larger-than-life amateur sleuth Sebastian McCabe and the police agencies of both town and gown.

Sherlock Holmes undertakes one of the strangest adventures of his career when he agrees to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Mr. James Phillimore, who stepped back into his house to get his umbrella and was never seen again. The great detective's inquiries take him down a sometimes-false trail from a home in Surrey to a music hall in London and back again before he finds the astonishing answer to this puzzling problem.

Fresh from almost getting killed helping Sebastian McCabe solve The 1895 Murder, Jeff Cody and Lynda Teal are enjoying their honeymoon alone in Rome when mystery and murder intrude. The disappearance of a young American’s Roman boyfriend seems like a familiar tale of a summer romance leading to heartbreak . . . until a cameo necklace purchased at the Vatican is stolen right off of Lynda’s neck.

Popular mystery writer Sebastian McCabe is about to conquer a new world with his Sherlock Holmes play 1895. On opening night, however, his Erin, Ohio, theatrical debut as both playwright and actor is upstaged by a murder in the back of the newly renovated theater.

London, 1924: When Alfie Barrington is stabbed to death outside his club, suspicion quickly falls on his widow, the lovely Sarah - and on her former beau, Enoch Hale. The American journalist has an alibi, but he doesn't know her name and Scotland Yard can't find her. Determined to solve this case without the help of his friend Sherlock Holmes, Hale launches and investigation that brings him into contact with Leonard and Virginia Woolf, bohemian writers and publishers; P.G. Wodehouse, creator of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster; Howard Carter, discoverer of King Tuts tomb.

London, 1922: Two years after helping Sherlock Holmes solve the Hangman Murders, American journalist Enoch Hale becomes even more intimately involved in another puzzling mystery. Langdale Pike, veteran purveyor of gossip to the trash newspapers, is poisoned while sipping tea with Hale - and apparently just as he is about to spill a secret more important than social gossip. With the unrequested aid of advertising copywriter Dorothy Sayers, Hale pursues a number of leads based on notes in Pike's pocket diary - including an interview with the formidable G.K. Chesterton.

Mystery writer, magician, Sherlockian, and sleuth-at-large: that's Sebastian "Mac" McCabe. This collection introduces the series of light-hearted but mysterious adventures of Mac and his brother-in-law as they uncover small-town secrets to solve murders that would stump the great Holmes himself.

"We've been tasered, drugged, kidnapped, and almost blown up. So, I'm sorry we're late for the party." Jeff Cody is having a bad day. But listeners will love this short story about a Halloween party gone terribly wrong. If you haven't heard any of the critically acclaimed Sebastian McCabe & Jeff Cody mystery novels, The Revengers is the perfect introduction.