April, 1865. Matthew Grand, a former Yankee captain who witnessed the assassination of President Lincoln, and ambitious young journalist James Batchelor team up to track down the notorious Haymarket Strangler, who is garrotting young women in London's Soho district. Their investigations uncover a disturbing link to the death of Abraham Lincoln.

Intrepid 19th-century private investigators American Matthew Grand and Englishman James Batchelor return in their second mystery. June, 1868. On receiving a commission from Matthew's cousin Luther to look into the suspicious death of Lafayette Baker, Head of the US National Detective Police, private investigators Matthew Grand and his business partner James Batchelor leave London for Washington DC. They find a country still scarred by the bitter legacy...

"Private enquiry agents Grand and Batchelor have been hired by timber merchant Selwyn Byng to discover what's happened to his heiress wife. The only clue they have to go on is a badly spelled note demanding GBP5,000 if Byng is to see Emilia again. Then a human torso is found floating in the River Thames. Could there be a connection?"--

"London. May, 1878. Private enquiry agents Matthew Grand and James Batchelor have been hired by the artist James Whistler to dig into the past of outspoken critic John Ruskin, with whom he has an ongoing feud. Not particularly optimistic of success, the two detectives are sidetracked from the investigation by the murder of a prostitute in nearby Cremorne Gardens. Her body posed on a park bench, a book on birth control sitting on her lap, Clara Jenkins...