Book Review: Benjamin Franklin Takes the Case

Benjamin Franklin Takes the Case, Robert Lee Hall.  227pp, paperback.

This is an outstanding "celebrity-sleuth" mystery set in London during the years Benjamin Franklin was in residence, as agent for the colony of Philadelphia against the heirs of William Penn, seeking to get them to end the exemption of their extensive holdings from taxes needed to support the colony.  The legendary master of lightning and electricity, Franklin becomes involved in the death of an old friend, a printer who has called on him for help.  When the printer winds up dead, Franklin takes into his home a servant boy who was working for the printer.  Thus he saves the boy from the printer's surviving family, as rotten a bunch of people as you could hope for.  Franklin procedes to hunt for the murderer, and it takes him not only to the printer's family members, but also to the doors of a variety of Londoners of all stations as he pieces together the reasons for the deed.  This book gives a good feel for mid-18th Century London and for the language of the period.  Franklin himself is a fascinating individual in fact and, in Hall's hands, as a fictional character as well.  Hall produced at least two sequels featuring Franklin.  Excellent, quick read. 

Issued in 1988, look for it at friends of the library book sales and online at Amazon and similar used book sources.