Seattle, 1901. The race to win an electrical competition incites Professor Bradshaw's obsession for invention in this sequel to A Spark of Death. The winner's telephonic system will deliver music of the Seattle Grand Theater to homes throughout the city, and Bradshaw is confident he can win. But a missing peddler and child divert him, while the assassination of President McKinley drops Bradshaw and the entire nation into shock.

When Bradshaw discovers the peddler's child may have witnessed a murder, he follows her trail below Yesler Way, plunging into a seedy underworld of bars and brothels. Frustrated by the police department's apathy and caught between power struggles, he doesn't know who to trust. Each step of his investigation entangles him deeper in crime and corruption until he realizes that to save the peddler's child, he must transform his contest entry into a trap to catch a killer.

The Professor Bradshaw Mystery Series features Benjamin Bradshaw, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington. Bradshaw's electrical forensic and investigative skills, combined with a keen understanding of human nature, bring the Seattle Police, and murder, frequently to his doorstep during the social and scientific turmoil of the early twentieth century.