Tuesday Teaser/Opening ~ A Spark of Death

This week, I'm reading a cozy historical mystery, A Spark of Death: A Professor Bradshaw Mystery.


Blurb:
Can death bring a man back to life? When UW Professor Benjamin Bradshaw discovers a despised colleague dead inside the Faraday Cage of the Electric Machine, his carefully controlled world shatters. The facts don't add up--the police shout murder--and Bradshaw is the lone suspect. To protect his young son and clear his name, he must find the killer.

Seattle in 1901 is a bustling blend of frontier attitude and cosmopolitan swagger. The Snoqualmie Falls Power Plant lights the city, but to most Seattleites, electricity is new-fangled and dangerous. The public wants a culprit--they want Bradshaw behind bars. The killer wants Bradshaw dead.

His life and liberty threatened, Bradshaw discovers the thrill of investigation as he's thrust deeper into the hunt.Questions abound. How had the Electric Machine's Tesla Coil delivered a fatal shock? Was the murder personal--or connected to President McKinley's planned visit? Were students involved, or in danger? And why had Bradshaw's best friend, Henry, fled to Alaska the day of the murder?

When Henry's niece Missouri appears on Bradshaw's porch in need of a home, her unorthodox views and femininity confuse and intrigue him as he struggles to protect his own haunting secret. Danger and death lurk everywhere--disguised as accidents. Has Bradshaw come alive again only to lose all he holds dear? Before it's too late, will he discover the circuit path that led to a spark of death?

Opening:
  A curtain of pale hair hid the young man's downturned face. His skinny fingers trembled as he toyed with the pencil. He'd been staring at his examination paper without making a single mark for ten minutes.
  Test anxiety. Professor Benjamin Bradshaw knew it well. Bradshaw himself had never been good at written examinations. It was the blank page, the abstract theory that vexed him. Put him on a pole with a length of wire to string, give him the components of an electric motor to assemble, and his mind sang. This young man was much the same.

Teaser:
  "I help the students understand the material so they they can pass their exams. It's called teaching, Detective. It's what I'm paid to do."


Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at:: http://shouldbereading.wordpress.com/ 




Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea