After a brilliant military career, esteemed General Thaddeus Carlyon finally meets his death, not in the frenzy of battle but at an elegant London dinner party. His demise appears to be the result of a freak accident, but the general's beautiful wife, Alexandra, readily confesses that she killed him-a story she clings to even under the threat of the noose. Investigator William Monk, nurse Hester Latterly, and brilliant Oliver Rathbone, counsel for...

"Victoria's London was the queen of the unvierse, a dazzling metropolis from whose magnificent mansions and discreetly luxurious clubs flowed the strategies that built the greatest empire ever known. Meanwhile, the city's poor suffered and died in hopeless obscurity. Inspector William Monk knows his city's best and its worst--or so he blieves, until the day when charming Genevieve Stonefield comes to plead with him to find her missing husband. In...

In a London hospital, Prudence Barrymore, a talented nurse who had once been the one of Florence Nightingale's angels of mercy in the Crimean War, meets sudden death by strangulation. Private inquiry agent William Monk is engaged to investigate this horrific crime--which intuition tells him was no random stroke of violence by a madman. Greatly helped by his unconventional friend Hester Latterly, another of Miss Nightingale's nurses, and barrister...

A man in Victorian England who was accused of breaking a promise of marriage commits suicide. The man denied the charge, claiming he could not possibly marry the woman, rich and beautiful though she was. Why not? PI William Monk wants to find out.

On a patrol boat near Waterloo Bridge, police superintendent William Monk notices a young couple engaged in an intense discussion. Seconds later, the two plunge to their deaths in the icy waters of the Thames. Was it an accident, a suicide, or a murder? Ever the investigator, Monk learns that the woman, Mary Havilland, had planned to marry the fair-haired man who shared her fate. He also discovers that Mary's father had recently died in a supposed...

Deep in London's dangerous slums, Victorians transact their most secret and shameful business. For a price, a man can procure whatever he wants r one such man, the price he pays is his life. In sunless Water Lane, respected solicitor Leighton Duff lies dead, kicked and beaten to death. Beside him is the barely living body of his son, Rhys. The police cannot fathom these brutal assaults until shrewd investigator William Monk, aided by nurse-turned-sleuth...

As commander of the River Police, Monk is accustomed to violent death, but the mutilated female body found on Limehouse Pier one chilly December morning moves him with horror and pity. The victim's name is Zenia Gadney. Her waterfront neighbors can tell him little, only that the same unknown gentleman had visited her once a month for many years. She must be a prostitute, but, described as quiet and kempt, she doesn't appear to be a fallen woman. What...

Though Monk is witness to the terrible bombing of an afternoon pleasure boat on the river that leaves 200 people dead, much to his dismay the case is taken from his hands and given over to the commissioner of police. An Egyptian man is quickly caught, tried, and sentenced to death--and then just as swiftly murdered in prison. When evidence surfaces that proves the dead man innocent, the case is handed back to Monk, who must now rely on his own memory...