Murder at the Margin: A Henry Spearman Mystery

Professor and amateur sleuth Henry Spearman uses economics to try to solve a murder while on a Caribbean vacation

Cinnamon Bay seems like the ideal Caribbean getaway. But for Harvard economist and amateur detective Henry Spearman it offers an unexpected and decidedly different diversion: murder. With the police at a loss, Spearman investigates on his own, following a rather different set of laws-those of economics. Theorizing and hypothesizing, Spearman sets himself on the killer’s trail as it winds from the perfect beaches and manicured lawns of a resort to the bustling old port of Charlotte Amalie to the perilous hiking trails of a dense forest. Can Spearman crack the case using economics-and before it’s too late?

Marshall Jevons is the pen name of Kenneth G. Elzinga, the Robert C. Taylor Professor of Economics at the University of Virginia, and William Breit (1933-2011). Together, they wrote two other Henry Spearman mysteries, The Fatal Equilibrium and A Deadly Indifference (Princeton). Elzinga, as Marshall Jevons, is also the author of another Henry Spearman book, The Mystery of the Invisible Hand (Princeton).