In the course of his investigation, Dakota discovers that a rogue psychology research experiment is actually the front for an elaborate and nefarious human trafficking scheme, all for something even more sinister.
Dakota Stevens has just thrown off the shackles of the FBI and launched his own private detective agency. But it’s not going well. His so-called cases are limited to tawdry divorce work, and his personal life is a shambles.Enter the Director of the FBI, who compels Dakota to go undercover at an Ivy League university. His task? To rescue a college coed from the clutches of a Svengali-like psychology researcher.
The novel also shows Dakota meeting his associate, gorgeous international chess grandmaster Svetlana Krüsh, for the first time. Svetlana, bored with her chess career, is seeking a new challenge.
“I knew I wanted Dakota and Svetlana’s introduction to mirror the first meeting of Mr. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel A Study in Scarlet,” Orcutt said. “Like other aficionados of Sherlock Holmes, I have always loved Stamford’s introduction of them to each other in a chemistry lab, and Holmes’ famous first words to Watson: ‘You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.’”
In the novel, Dakota must navigate a minefield that includes flirtatious coeds, passionate professors, hired thugs, and former FBI colleagues.Most of the action in the novel takes place in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts, around a certain Ivy League university.
“I began writing A Study in Crimson before I knew how and when Dakota and Svetlana would meet,” Orcutt said. “At the outset all I knew was, I wanted the title of the story to have ‘crimson’ in it as my homage to A Study in Scarlet. However, early on I decided the word ‘crimson’ would refer to blood, as well as an incidental connection to Harvard University.”
In the course of his investigation, Dakota discovers that a rogue psychology research experiment is actually the front for an elaborate and nefarious human trafficking scheme, all for something even more sinister.
A Study in Crimson, the prequel to the critically acclaimed Dakota Stevens Mystery Series, shows a younger, devil-may-care Dakota at his charming, witty, and resourceful best.
Chris Orcutt has written professionally for over 25 years as a novelist, short story writer, speechwriter, journalist and playwright. A Study in Crimson is his eleventh book.
Orcutt lives and works in Dutchess County, New York. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Dakota Stevens Mystery Series, including the Amazon #1 bestseller A Real Piece of Work. Orcutt’s short story collection, The Man, The Myth, The Legend, was voted by IndieReader as one of the best books of 2013.
His modern pastoral novel One Hundred Miles from Manhattan (an IndieReader Best Book for 2014) prompted Kirkus Reviews to favorably compare Orcutt to Pulitzer Prize-winning author John Cheever. In 2017, Orcutt released The Ronald And Other Plays and a humorous memoir about the writing life entitled Perpetuating Trouble.
A Study in Crimson, along with the rest of the Dakota Mystery Series, is available in paperback and ebook form at Amazon.com
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