The year is 1924. The streets of St. James ring with jazz as Britain
races forward into an age of peace and prosperity. London's back alleys,
however, are filled with broken soldiers and still shadowed by the
lingering horrors of the Great War.
Only a few years removed from the trenches of Flanders himself,
Lieutenant Eric Peterkin has just been granted membership in the most
prestigious soldiers-only club in London: the Britannia. But when a
gentleman's wager ends with a member stabbed to death, the victim's last
words echo in the lieutenant's head: that he would "Soon right a great
wrong from the past."
Eric is certain one of his fellow members is the murderer. But who?
Captain Mortimer Wolf, the soldier's soldier thrice escaped from German
custody? Second Lieutenant Oliver Saxon, the brilliant codebreaker? Or
Captain Edward Aldershott, the steely club president whose Savile Row
suits hide a frightening collision of mustard gas scars?
Eric's investigation will draw him far from the marbled halls of the
Britannia to the shadowy remains of a dilapidated war hospital and the
heroin dens of Limehouse. As the facade of gentlemenhood cracks, Eric
faces a Matryoshka doll of murder, vice, and secrets pointing not only
to the officers of his own club, but to the very investigator assigned
by Scotland Yard.
