William Monk knows London’s streets like the back of his hand; after all, they are where he earns his living. But the river Thames and its teeming docks—where towering schooners and clipper ships unload their fabulous cargoes and wharf rats and night plunderers ply their trades—is unknown territory.
Only dire need persuades him to accept an assignment from shipping magnate Clement Louvain to investigate the theft of a cargo of African ivory from Louvain’s recently docked schooner, the Maude Idris. Monk is desperate for work, not only to feed himself and his wife, Hester, but to keep open the doors of her clinic, a last resort for sick and starving street women.
But he wonders: Why didn’t Louvain report the ivory theft directly to the River Police? Why did he warn Monk not to investigate the murder of one of the Maude Idris crew? Even more mysterious, why has Louvain brought to Hester’s clinic a desperately ill woman who, he claims, is the discarded mistress of an old friend? Neither Hester nor Monk anticipates the nightmare answers to these questions...nor the trap that soon so fatefully ensnares them.
Anne Perry is the bestselling author of two acclaimed series set in Victorian England: the Charlotte and Thomas Pitt novels, including Buckingham Palace Gardens and Long Spoon Lane, and the William Monk novels, including Execution Dock and Dark Assassin. She is also the author of a series of five World War I novels, as well as seven holiday novels, most recently A Christmas Odyssey, and a historical novel, The Sheen on the Silk, set in the Ottoman Empire. Anne Perry lives in Scotland.
For nearly twenty years, David Colacci has recorded audiobooks around his busy schedule in regional theater as an actor, a director and as Artistic Director of Hope Summer Repertory Theater in Holland, Michigan. David has recorded more than 70 audiobooks, which include mystery and suspense, science fiction and fantasy, and literary works. He is married to Susan Ericksen, who also narrates for Brilliance Audio.