"When a ransom exchange turns violent in the latest mystery from New York Times bestselling author Anne Perry, Commander William Monk faces an unthinkable possibility: betrayal by his own men. Local businessman Harry Exeter doesn't want the aid of the Thames River Police in tracking down the men who kidnapped his wife, Kate. He only asks them to help him navigate Jacob's Island, a creepy mass of decrepit buildings where he will hand off a large sum...

Superintendent Thomas Pitt cannot immediately ascertain exactly what segment of society the dead man riding the morning tide of the Thames came from, but the sight of him is unforgettable. Is he, as Pitt fears, a French diplomat who has gone missing? Or merely someone who greatly resembles him?

When the bodies of two high-profile women are discovered, bearing signs of rape, and an innocent man is accused of the crime, Thomas Pitt's quest for the truth forces him to play a dangerous game of international politics and murder.

Things are not what they seem in fashionable Rutland Place, where secrets that are never discussed at tea include murder   When her mother asks her help in finding a lost locket with a compromising picture, neither Charlotte Pitt, nor her mother, has any idea that the locket may be at the center of a bizarre chain of events leading to murder. Arriving at her mother's home at Rutland Place, Charlotte discovers that other residents of the exclusive...

The Devil is certainly at work in the dark streets of the slums of Victorian London-and Charlotte and Thomas Pitt must stop a killer before he strikes again   A serial killer is loose in the slums of Devil's Acre. The murders are brutal, but it is the killer's grizzly signature that shocks even Inspector Thomas Pitt, no stranger to death and violent crime. The victims are stabbed and sexually mutilated. When Pitt recognizes one of the victims as...

Something deadly lurks in the stifling shadows of stylish Paragon Walk in Victorian London   When innocent Fanny Nash of exclusive Paragon Walk dies in the arms of her exquisite sister-in-law, Jessamyn, Inspector Pitt is assigned to investigate her rape and murder. Every man of Paragon Walk is under suspicion, even Pitt's brother-in-law, Lord George Ashworth, who was the last to have seen her. Could it be the charming, enigmatic Frenchman? Fanny's...

Thomas and Charlotte Pitt must discover the truth of a young gentleman's sordid murder-or an innocent man will hang   The naked body of an aristocratic youth turns up in the sewers beneath Bluegate Fields, one of London's most notorious slums. But Arthur Waybourne had been drowned in his bath, not in the Thames. More shocking still was that the boy had been sexually violated and infected with syphilis before he was murdered. Despite Inspector Thomas...

--   Only Anne Perry could have created the tense unfolding of plot and counterplot, love and betrayal, scandal and murder that follows. -- — -- — -- --   “Perry has always done her historical homework on the darker elements of the British ruling class, and she has outdone herself this time.” -- Upstairs, Downstairs—The New York Times Book Review

As commander of the River Police, Monk is accustomed to violent death, but the mutilated female body found on Limehouse Pier one chilly December morning moves him with horror and pity. The victim's name is Zenia Gadney. Her waterfront neighbors can tell him little -- only that the same unknown gentleman had visited her once a month for many years. She must be a prostitute, but -- described as quiet and kempt -- she doesn't appear to be a fallen woman....