There is a new broom at Scotland Yard: Assistant Commissioner Nimrod Frost. His first βlittle jobβ for Lestrade is to investigate the reported appearance of a lion in Cornwall, a savager of sheep and frightener of men; hardly a task for an Inspector of the Criminal Investigation Department.
Having solved that case to his own satisfaction, Lestrade returns to London and to another suspicious death and then another. All old men who should have died quietly in their sleep. Is there a connection? Is there a serial killer at work?
Lestrade clashes with his superiors and finds himself suspended from duty, but that is a mere technicality as he moves from workhouse to royal palace, from backstage of the Lyceum to regimental dinner in his search for clues.
When can his glory fade?
βA romp it is β but Trow also has a serious side, which he shows in the first fifteen pages, giving us a sensitive historical account of the Light Brigade and the men who comprised it. Trow writes of the disastrous event with an empathy which makes this book even more exceptional.β
The Strand Magazine
From Publishers Weekly
Cleverly plotted and fast paced, this exciting tale brings back Trow's incarnation of Conan Doyle's Sholto Lestrade (The Adventures of Inspector Lestrade; Forecasts, Aug. 3), showing him to be a shrewd, intelligent and formidable investigator. In 1893, the new assistant commissioner of Scotland Yard, Nimrod Frost, sends Lestrade to Cornwall, where one William Lamb has been killed by a wild animal. Upon Lestrade's return, ex-police sergeant Beastie Beeson makes known to the inspector his suspicions that an old mate, Joe Towers, was murdered. Indeed, an autopsy confirms that Towers was poisoned with cyanide. The demise of a lighthouse keeper then brings Lestrade to Norfolk; while investigating that death, the inspector not only meets Kaiser Wilhelm but is suspended for attempting to attack the German ruler. Even so, Lestrade is sent undercover to delve into yet another death, by poison. During the ensuing months, Lestrade discovers that, 40 years before, all of the murdered men had participated in the Charge of the Light Brigade. The novel's cast of cameo celebrities (Winston Churchill, Bram Stoker, Henry Irving, even an infant Basil Rathbone) seems a contrivance. Otherwise, Trow offers a genuinely humorous pastiche buoyed by a refreshing irreverence too often absent from Conan Doyle knockoffs.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
About the Author
M J Trow is a crime writer, historian and biographer who for many years doubled as a history teacher. Now retired, he is the author of three successful crime fiction series β Lestrade, Maxwell and Kit Marlowe, the latest written in collaboration with his wife. He lives in the Isle of Wight, and as well as writing lectures on cruise ships has appeared many times on television in historical and crime documentaries.