Messrs. Mallalieu and Cotherstone were outsiders who had built a prosperous business in Highmarket and even been elected as Mayor and Treasurer of the borough. But when an ex-detective moves to town, 30 years of respectability is suddenly threatened by revelations from the past.

Jackie Farnish has grown up in a grindingly poor household, and as she reaches adulthood she resolves to do whatever is necessary to claw her way out of poverty. She is loved by her childhood playmate Joe Bartle, but takes him for granted and feels that he lacks the spark or ambition to match her determination to make something of herself. Instead she pursues Albert Grice, son of a wealthy grocery store owner, and believes they have an understanding. She is horrified when Albert goes on holiday, and returns newly married to another woman.

In the whole history of the English people there is no period so absolutely heroic, so full of enthralling interest, as that in which the might of England made itself apparent by land and sea-the period which saw good Queen Bess mistress of English hearts and Englishmen and sovereign of the great beginnings which have come to such a magnificent fruition under Victoria.

Joseph Smith Fletcher (7 February 1863 - 30 January 1935) was a British journalist and author. He wrote more than 230 books on a wide variety of subjects, both fiction and non-fiction, and was one of the leading writers of detective fiction in the "Golden Age Fletcher was born in Halifax, West Yorkshire, the son of a clergyman. His father died when he was eight months old, and after which his grandmother raised him on a farm in Darrington, near Pontefract. He was educated at Silcoates School in Wakefield, and after some study of law, he became a journalist At age 20, Fletcher began working in...