In Victorian England, superintendent Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, investigate murder and espionage. The case centers on traitors selling Germany documents relating to Britain's colonial plans in Africa. By the author of The Hyde Park Headsman.

Terrorist activity in nineteenth-century London plays a role in the latest Charlotte and Thomas Pitt adventure.

When Commander Thomas Pitt is ordered to protect a young woman visiting London from Spain, he cannot see why this is a job for Special Branch. When she disappears in the dead of night from Angel Court, however, he is faced with a dangerous mystery. Sofia preached new, and some say blasphemous, religious ideals, and her life had been threatened. But Pitt senses there is some deeper and more dangerous reason for her kidnap -- if that is what it is....

In Victorian London, Supt. Pitt of Scotland Yard investigates the murder of three apparently disparate victims: a band leader, a naval officer and a bus conductor. All three were beheaded. The case leaves him stumped, but fortunately there is his wife.

Investigating evidence of a violent struggle at the home of Ministry of Defense member Dudley Kynaston, Pitt and the Special Branch discover the brutally murdered body of a young woman before realizing that Kynaston is not who he appears to be.

Special Branch officer Thomas Pitt, hastening to rendezvous with a secret informant, arrives a second too late, preceded by a knife-wielding assassin. As he pursues the killer and the information he needs to stop a devastating plot against the British government, his clever wife Charlotte heads to Dublin to investigate a case involving Pitt's supervisor, Victor Narraway.

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.