Henry Spearman, the balding economics professor with a knack for solving crimes, returns in The Mystery of the Invisible Hand--a clever whodunit of campus intrigue, stolen art, and murder. Having just won the Nobel Prize, Spearman accepts an invitation to lecture at Monte Vista University. He arrives in the wake of a puzzling art heist with plans t

Economics professor and amateur detective Henry Spearman tackles a mystery where the price of art is murder

In The Mystery of the Invisible Hand, Henry Spearman, an economics professor with a knack for solving crimes, is pulled into a case that mixes campus intrigue, stolen art, and murder. Arriving at San Antonio's Monte Vista University to teach a course on art and economics, he is confronted with a puzzling art theft and the suspicious suicide of the school's artist-in-residence. From Texas to New York, Spearman traces the connections between economics and the art world, finding his clues in monopolies, auction theory, and Adam Smith. How is a company's capital like an art museum's collection? What does the market say about art's authenticity versus its availability? What is the mysterious "death effect"--and does it lie at the heart of the case? Spearman must rely on his savviest economic thinking to answer these questions--and pin down a killer.

"Ingenious. . . . In The Invisible Hand, Marshall Jevons comes of age not only as a crime writer, but as one of a kind. The detective fiction is top-drawer, but the combination with economics is seamless. No one else has done this, and now Jevons has done it again. Rejoice!"---Fred S. McChesney, Southern Economic Journal