Award-winning author Laura Joh Rowland is back with the sixth in her
critically acclaimed Victorian Mystery series in which Sarah must search
for the killer of a woman she found murdered on a train all the while
waiting for the verdict of her father's trial for heinous crimes
committed two decades earlier.
London, November 1890. Crime scene photographer Sarah Bain Barrett
faces a perfect storm of events. She and her husband Detective Sergeant
Barrett are riding on a train that crashes. While rescuing other
passengers, they find a woman who's been strangled to death. Their
search for her identity and her killer lead them to Cremorne Gardens, a
seedy riverside pleasure park that's a combination carnival, theater,
freak show, and museum of oddities. It's among the most challenging
cases that Sarah, Barrett, and her friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick
O'Reilly have ever undertaken. The suspects include a dwarf, a female
acrobat, and a member of the Royal Family. Due to the royal connection,
the police commissioner declares the case top-secret. Sarah and company
must investigate on the quiet, keeping the suspects, the press, and the
public in the dark. That's easier said than done. The investigation is
complicated by the injury Hugh sustained during their last case, Mick's
romance with a woman who has psychic powers, and Barrett's old flame.
Meanwhile, Sarah's father Benjamin Bain goes on trial for a rape and
murder that happened more than two decades ago. The victim was a teenage
girl named Ellen Casey. Is Benjamin Bain as innocent as he claims? Sarah
has serious doubts. The trial is the scandal of the year, a media blitz.
The outcome--and the truth about the murder on the train--are beyond
Sarah's wildest imaginings. What dangerous secrets are hidden behind the
tawdry glamor of Cremorne Gardens? Is Benjamin Bain wrongly accused, or
a guilty sinner who deserves to be hanged?
