The Hellfire Conspiracy is set in London in 1885, and features the detective (more precisely "private enquiry agents") team of Cyrus Barker and Thomas Llewelyn; the story is narrated by Llewelyn. Their latest case begins when a distraught father makes his way into Barker's office to engage the tw...
This is first in a series by Will Thomas. I definitely will keep reading more. My sister Cris, an avid reader of historical fiction mysteries, told me when we spoke recently that I'd really enjoy this series. She was right! Although it is a Victorian "private enquiry" detective story set in Lon...
In The Limehouse Text, Barker and Llewelyn discover a pawn ticket among the effects of Barker's late assistant, leading them to London's Chinese district, Limehouse. There they retrieve an innocent-looking book that proves to be a rare and secret text stolen from a Nanking monastery, containing l...
I thought it possible the colonel was sleeping off the effects of the whiskey he had consumed. It felt strange not attending a service on the Sabbath, but Barker explained that he could not risk having van Rhyn, that old anarchist, seen in a Baptist church. We read the newspapers until eleven thi...
There was no need to wonder where we were going. He was headed for a tearoom of his own choosing, a clandestine one, run by his closest friend, Ho. Once we’d reached the establishment, we walked down the dark stairs that led along the tunnel under the river. After an inspector had been shot in th...
Briggs had fallen into a sullen silence, probably irked at how easily he had been overcome by my employer. In spite of what he’d called out, he appeared incurious of his surroundings, or of his sodden clothing, but then, he was likely nursing a concussion. The boy soon ret...
I could now draw a rather faithful rendering of the entire district, with all of the streets and many of its buildings. Also, I could name at least thirty individuals in the area whose names we had reason to learn, and several dozen others whom I recognized but whose names I did not yet know. In ...