When a naval courier is mutilated and murdered by highwaymen, a Bow Street Runner is assigned to the case. Though a little trickier than his usual jobs, the case appears routine enough. That is until a colleague investigating a disappearance is found murdered and the runner takes over both the victim’s current case and the search for his killer.
The investigator soon finds himself following trails that leads all over London, both geographically and socially, weaving the three separate cases into a web of conspiracy. Napoleon’s agents are planning to assassinate the prince in the heart of London and if he can’t stop them then nobody can.
And that’s about as far as I can go without spoilers…
Balls, duels, London lowlife, sex and conspiracy-this historical action novel was, dare I say it, quite a romp.
The pace is fast and the plot twists not overly complex, making for easy reading. There is a bit of deux ex machina (often in the form of the hero’s old army friend, who has a reassuring tendency to turn up just as things are looking dire for our hero) that did put me off just a little. I wanted a hero who was smart enough not to get into those situations to begin with or who was clever enough to get out of them alone if he did.
I suspect this is the first book in a series and though I liked it well enough I’m not sure that I would seek out more of the same. It would very much depend on which tack individual instalments took-Lynn
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