A murder mystery set at the dawn of the 1900's.

"The Playwright's Murder is one of those books that immediately clutches at your interest to keep you turning the pages and refuses to release its grasp until the final word has been read." (Indy-review-USA)

"The story has that quality of 'The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins' to keep you reading to find out if what you suspect happened, really did. You will be wrong! The twist is as logical as it is surprising. One of the best mystery thrillers I have had the pleasure to read in a long time. Alex Winter is an author to watch." (NY.Post.book.reviews)

Two men of similar physical appearance and both with desperate desire to change their bleak future, walk along a canal towpath from opposite directions.
One man, whose clothes are worn and cheap, is a struggling playwright who earns a pittance of a wage as a teacher, a job he detests. He is trapped in a gloom-filled life with little chance of reprieve. His only spark of comfort is provided by his girlfriend, but when he returns home one day to find he has lost her to another man it is almost more than he can endure.
The other man is well dressed, wealthy and on his way to visit the latest woman in his life, the girlfriend of the rage-filled man walking toward him. The family company he has run into the ground with his extravagant lifestyle will drag him down with it when its debt ridden carcass collapses. Too fond of his current way of life to let it be snatched away, he hatches a plan that will see him free of his troubles.
The two men pass beneath a bridge spanning the foul, murky canal at the exact same time, but only one emerges. The man, who had seized the opportunity to change his life forever, assumes a false identity and flees to America, but instead of lying low as commonsense would dictate, the fugitive becomes involved with a famous theater actress and begins to experience the life he has always dreamed of.
When someone from his old life, who knows all of his dirty secrets, knocks on his door, he discovers there is nowhere he can run where his past won't follow. He must decide on a solution to bury that which threatens his bright future or face the dreaded hangman's noose.

A murder mystery set in England and New York at the dawn of the 1900's. An era when huge steam driven beasts thundered along railway lines, when a transatlantic crossing would be aboard a luxury passenger liner and when Henry Ford's forward thinking produced cars affordable to the masses, a time of telegrams, porters and different classes.
A time when a criminal leaving behind no obvious evidence, not caught in the act or witnessed, had a good chance of escaping punishment. Those breaking the law were caught by diligent detectives seeking out the smallest clue. The finest detectives of the day had aspects portrayed by the fictionalized characters of Sherlock Holmes and Columbo. The detective of this story, Silas Mortimer, is such a man, intelligent, resourceful and possessed with a perseverance, which, when he suspects a foul crime has been committed, refuses to let him quit until the culprit had been apprehended.

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