Death and the Jubilee

Description

Find a murderer - and save the Queen's Jubilee! It is 1897 and the London is preparing for Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee. But a corpse is with no head or hands is dragged out of the Thames. The dead man was old and proserously dressed, but there are no other clues to his identity and the police ask for the discreet assistance of Lord Francis Powerscourt. His investigation leads him to a mysterious mansion in Oxfordshire, with classical temples in the gardens and in the house, a second corpse killed in a fire. On the track of the murderer, Powerscourt realizes that both he and his family are in mortal danger - and the outcome could wreck the Queen's Diamond Jubilee...

David Dickinson was born in Dublin. After reading Classics at Cambridge he joined the BBC and was editor of Newsnight and Panorama and series editor on Monarchy, a three part programme on the British Royal Family. He lives in London.

A cracking yarn, beguilingly real from start to finish... you have to pinch yourself to remind you that it is fiction - or is it? This is detective fiction in the grand style; the characters and the plot soar upwards and carry us in their wake. Powerscourt's debut in this intoxicating book is the start of a gilded life in the archives of crime. In this excellent novel, Dickinson weaves a tale of blackmail and murder among the royals late in Victoria's reign... One hopes to see more of Lord Powerscourt and his friends in the near future. - Publishers Weekly