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“A must read for mystery fans!”
—Charles Todd, New York Times bestselling author of the Ian Rutledge Mysteries
London, 1878. One April morning, a small boat bearing a young woman’s corpse floats down the murky waters of the Thames. When the victim is identified as Rose Albert, daughter of a prominent judge, the Scotland Yard director gives the case to Michael Corravan, one of the only Senior Inspectors remaining after a corruption scandal the previous autumn left the division in ruins. Reluctantly, Corravan abandons his ongoing case, a search for the missing wife of a shipping magnate, handing it over to his young colleague, Mr. Stiles.
An Irish former bare-knuckles boxer and dockworker from London’s seedy East End, Corravan has good street sense and an inspector’s knack for digging up clues. But he’s confounded when, a week later, a second woman is found dead in a rowboat, and then a third. The dead women seem to have no connection whatsoever. Meanwhile, Mr. Stiles makes an alarming discovery: the shipping magnate’s missing wife, Mrs. Beckford, may not have fled her house because she was insane, as her husband claims, and Mr. Beckford may not be the successful man of business that he appears to be.
Slowly, it becomes clear that the river murders and the case of Mrs. Beckford may be linked through some terrible act of injustice in the past—for which someone has vowed a brutal vengeance. Now, with the newspapers once again trumpeting the Yard’s failures, Corravan must dredge up the truth—before London devolves into a state of panic and before the killer claims another innocent victim.
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
November 9, 2021 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781643858708
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781643858708
- File size: 3166 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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September 15, 2021
The Victorian setting remains the same, but Odden exchanges refined Inspector Hallam, last seen in A Trace of Deceit (2019), for conflicted, determined Inspector Mickey Corravan. Corravan was a poor Irish orphan who worked as a stevedore and bare-knuckle fighter before signing on with the River Police and then Scotland Yard. So he seems the perfect choice for a murder most likely committed on the Thames. The body of a young woman is found floating in a small boat. Her only jewelry, a locket with initials and a picture, soon identifies her as the missing daughter of a wealthy judge. Although Corravan's boss orders him to make the case his chief concern, he continues his search for a missing woman, the wife of a shipping magnate, whom he finds in an insane asylum for the poor. She's speechless and so terrified of returning home that she attacks Corravan, who takes her to Dr. Everett, a medical friend who treats mentally disturbed patients kindly, while he investigates her husband. When a second young woman is found murdered in a rowboat, Corravan starts looking for suspects who may have hated their loved ones. The upper classes close ranks, and only maids and friends of the dead women give him any information. As the body count grows, Corravan's temper threatens to get the best of him, while Scotland Yard is relentlessly criticized in the newspapers and his job hangs in the balance. A harrowing tale of unbridled vice that exposes the dark underbelly of Victorian society.COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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