Philadelphia - September, 1785. Benjamin Franklin is certain of Quaker stonecutter Jacob Maul's innocence, despite the fact that Maul has been jailed for murder after a second woman is found dead on his property with bruises to her throat. Franklin also knows that if he gets involved in proving Maul's innocence he'll never be left alone -- everyone in Philadelphia will seek his help with their troubles. So in strictest secrecy he recruits Revolutionary War veteran Captain James Jamison to be his legman. No one must know that he and Jamison are even acquainted. The reader accompanies Jamison as his pursuit of the killer leads him through Philadelphia's markets, taverns and slums, and as far afield as the university at Princeton and a farming community where everyone speaks German. Questioning informants as varied as a free black washerwoman, former Hessian mercenaries, and the midwives of Southwark, Captain Jamison discovers pivotal information with the help of his French grandmother's comely maid, Livy, and makes progress both in the investigation and in healing from the war wounds, both physical and emotional, that he carries. Meeting with Jamison in the dead of night, Franklin applies his extraordinary analytical abilities to the facts Jamison has gathered. But will Franklin's genius meet the perpetrator's challenge in the story's climactic showdown?

Benjamin Franklin and the Quaker Murders is the first in a series of historical detective novels set in Philadelphia featuring Benjamin Franklin.