The Compton File: A Tale of Intrigue

Lester Compton, a junior partner in a Chicago brokerage firm, is arrested for embezzlement and contract murder in the shooting death of the firm's socially prominent founder. Private investigator Frank Lydecker is hired by Lester Compton's lawyer and begins an investigation on the premise that Compton has been framed by someone else in the firm in collusion with the victim's much younger wife, sole beneficiary of her husband's life insurance policy. Collaborating with lifelong friends, Detective Lieutenant Andrew Brooke and fellow private investigator Alvin Stoddard, Lydecker navigates a maze of intrigue and diversions that leave him with a renewed reminder that all assumptions are suspect.