Inspector Thomas Pitt is shocked. The body of a boy, clearly from the upper classes, has been found in the filthy sewers of Bluegate Fields, one of London s most dangerous slums. What s more, the unfortunate boy had been violated before he was murdered. So vile a case is hardly a topic for drawing-room conversation.
But when the Waybournes, the boy s family, refuse to answer the police s questions, Inspector Pitt begins to wonder what secrets they are trying to hide. Pitt s wife and helpmeet, Charlotte, is determined to find out even if it means tearing down the facades of an oh-so-proper...

Nurse Hester Latterly finds herself well suited for the task: accompany Mrs. Mary Farraline, an elderly Scottish lady in delicate health, on a short train trip to London. Yet Hester s simple job takes a grave turn when Mrs. Farraline dies during the night. And when a postmortem examination of the body reveals a lethal dose of medicine, Hester is charged with murder punishable by execution.
This notorious case presents detective William Monk with a daunting task: find a calculating killer among the prominent and coolly unassailable Farraline clan and try to save Hester from the gallows."

It is a most incredible sight: a corpse sitting at the reins of a hansom cab-and not just any corpse, but the body of a peer of the realm. To Inspector Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, this macabre apparition seems like sheer lunacy. Who would ever want to exhume a decently buried old chap like Lord Augustus Fitzroy-Hammond?

A doctor insists that Lord Augustus's death was natural. But as far as the police are concerned, there's certainly nothing natural about any of this gristly aftermath. Inspector Pitt is determined to unearth the truth-even if the digging puts his own life at...

In a London hospital, Prudence Barrymore, a talented nurse who had once been one of Florence Nightingale's angels of mercy in the Crimean War, meets sudden death by strangulation. Private inquiry agent William Monk is engaged to investigate this horrific crime-which intuition tells him was no random stroke of violence by a madman.

Greatly helped by his unconventional friend Hester Latterly, another of Miss Nightingale's nurses, and barrister Oliver Rathbone, Monk assembles a portrait of the remarkable woman. Yet he also discerns the shadow of a tragic evil that darkens every level of...

Here are two holiday mysteries set in remote, snow-covered regions of Victorian Britain where the nights are indeed silent but all is not calm, and where some will sleep in eternal peace.
A CHRISTMAS BEGINNING
While spending Christmas on the island of Anglesey off the coast of Wales, Superintendent Runcorn of Scotland Yard, a lonely bachelor, stumbles upon the lifeless body of the vicar s younger sister in the village churchyard. Everyone insists that only a stranger to the island could have committed the heinous crime, but the evidence proves otherwise. Intending to uncover the...

In his family life Angus Stonefield had been gentle and loving, in business a man of probity, and in his relationship with his twin brother, Caleb, a virtual saint. Now Angus is missing, and it appears more than possible that Caleb a creature long since abandoned to depravity has murdered him. Hired to solve the mystery, William Monk puts himself in Angus s shoes, searching for clues to the missing man s fate and his vicious brother s whereabouts. Slowly Monk inches toward the truth and also, unwittingly, toward the destruction of his good name and livelihood."

London s most unusual sleuthing team, Inspector Thomas Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, just cannot seem to stay away from trouble. When Charlotte learns of her mother s distress in losing a locket with a compromising picture, she has no idea that it s just the beginning of a series of bizarre events that will end in sudden death. For hidden behind the sumptuous elegance of Rutland Place, where Charlotte s mother lives, are terrible secrets secrets so horrifying that only murder can conceal them. But the dangerous persistence of Charlotte and the quiet patience of Inspector Pitt will make it...

When a doctor is found brutally murdered in the lurid section of London aptly named -Devil's Acre, - even its most hardened residents are stunned. But shock soon turns to horror when Inspector Thomas Pitt discovers three more bodies with the same gruesome -calling card- a stab wound in the back and a rather inexpertly executed mutilation. As Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, race against time to find the killer, a treacherous mystery unfolds. And no one, not the lowest brand of ruffian or the most established aristocrat, will escape unscathed.

When Countess Zorah Rostova asks London barrister Sir Oliver Rathbone to defend her against a charge of slander, he is astonished to find himself accepting. For without a shred of evidence, the countess has publicly insisted that the onetime ruler of her small German principality was murdered by his wife, the woman who was responsible for the prince's exile to Venice twenty years before. Private investigator William Monk and his friend Hester Latterly journey to the City of Water in an attempt verify the countess's claims, and though the two manage to establish that the prince was indeed...

On the bustling docks along the River Thames, Great Britain s merchant ships unload the treasures of the world. And here, in dank and sinister alleys, sex merchants ply their lucrative trade. The dreaded kingpin of this dark realm is Jericho Phillips, who seems far beyond the reach of the law. But when thirteen-year-old Fig is found with his throat cut, Commander William Monk of the River Police swears that Phillips will hang for this abomination. Monk s wife, Hester, draws a highly unusual guerrilla force to her husband s cause a canny ratcatcher, a retired brothel keeper, a fearless street...