The first book in Perry's bestselling Victorian crime series, bringing together Inspector Thomas Pitt and Charlotte Ellison   Panic and fear strike the Ellison household when one of their own falls prey to the Cater Street murderer. While Mrs. Ellison and her three daughters are out, their maid becomes the third victim of a killer who strangles young women with cheese wire, leaving their swollen-faced bodies on the dark streets of this genteel neighborhood....

Superintendent Thomas Pitt cannot immediately ascertain exactly what segment of society the dead man riding the morning tide of the Thames came from, but the sight of him is unforgettable. Is he, as Pitt fears, a French diplomat who has gone missing? Or merely someone who greatly resembles him?

Investigating evidence of a violent struggle at the home of Ministry of Defense member Dudley Kynaston, Pitt and the Special Branch discover the brutally murdered body of a young woman before realizing that Kynaston is not who he appears to be.

"When Thomas Pitt is tasked with playing bodyguard to Sofia Delacruz, a young and controversial British preacher who has been living in Spain and has returned to England on a mysterious errand, he thinks it's a waste of Special Branch's time and resources. But when kidnappers manage to reach Sofia murdering two of her companions in the process. Pitt learns that the message the lovely evangelist was meant to deliver was far more urgent than he knew....

"Young lawyer Daniel Pitt must defend a British diplomat who's accused of a theft that may hide a deadly crime in this compelling novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Twenty-one Days. Daniel Pitt, along with his parents, Charlotte and Thomas, is delighted that his sister Jemima has returned to London from the States for a visit. But it's not on the happiest of terms, since a violent theft just before her departure has left Jemima's...