The Bradys and the Cellar of Death

A detective who has cracked every case the city of New York could throw at him now faces something worse than a criminal — a phantom.

Old King Brady arrives in Boston at the request of the police chief, expecting a routine burglary. What he finds is a city that has been swallowing young men whole. One by one, Harvard students and banker's sons vanish without a trace, only their ransacked rooms left behind. No witnesses. No ransom demands. No bodies.

Then one of them comes back.

Jack Westerly staggers onto Boston Common in rags, barefoot, half-mad, screaming a single word into the night air: Death. His body is riddled with needle marks. His mind is shattered. And he cannot — or will not — say where he has been.

Brady sees what the Boston police missed entirely. Hidden beneath every disappearance is a single thread: old coins. A mysterious collector who haunts the Long Bridge, luring young numismatists away with rare specimens and hollow promises. A figure the locals call the medal man — draped in dozens of trophies, his name unknown to anyone.

Now a fifth young man has vanished overnight, and Brady knows the clock is already running.

Can he trace the medal man to whatever lightless pit he calls home before another family buries an empty coffin — or gets their son back in pieces?