Part of Lady Darby Mysteries
First published 2019
It is November 1831, and Lady Kiera Darby has come back to London after more than two years away under a cloud of scandal. The city is already on edge. A gang of body snatchers has been arrested, suspected of doing what Burke and Hare did in Edinburgh: murdering people off the streets and selling their corpses to medical schools. Londoners are furious and frightened, hunting for someone to blame. Then a blackmail letter arrives for Kiera. Someone wants to expose her late husband, an anatomist, as a buyer of stolen bodies, and to drag Kiera down with him. She knows the accusation could destroy not just her reputation but the safety of her new husband, investigative partner Sebastian Gage, and the child she is carrying. At the same time, a young nobleman is found dead a block from his own home. His family turns to Kiera and Gage for answers. Was he a victim of the London burkers, or did someone closer to him pull the trigger, hiding a private crime inside a city-wide panic? Kiera has to protect her family and find a killer before the mob, or the blackmailer, finds her first.
Genres: historical-fiction, mystery, crime, adult-fiction, thriller, mystery-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, fast-paced, gritty, suspenseful, tension-filled
Tropes: hidden-secrets, investigative-partnership, protective-husband, race-against-time
Setting: London, Edinburgh
Period: November 1831, 19th century
413 pages · ebook · Berkley Prime Crime/Penguin Publishing Group
Content warnings: death, murder