Silk Patterns

Chicago Detective Tom Murphy didn't ask for a case involving runway models, Milanese couture, and British intelligence. He got one anyway.

When Saskia Lenz dies in the aftermath of the Moretti fashion show, Murphy recognizes the gap between what the official report says and what the evidence suggests. The investigation takes him out of his jurisdiction and into a world where beauty is currency, silence is purchased in bulk, and the people best positioned to explain what happened are protected by institutions that would prefer the questions stop.

From the loading docks of River North to the design houses of Milan, the private rooms of London, and a disappearing atelier in the old medina of Tangier, Murphy follows a thread of coded silk through a conspiracy built on proximity to power and the willingness of everyone involved to look the other way. His only reliable guide is a photographer named Eddie Vale who has spent twenty years watching the fashion world say everything except the truth.

Silk Patterns is literary noir - precise, atmospheric, and unsparing. It is a novel about what institutions protect, what witnesses survive, and what happens when a detective refuses to sign the report and walk away.