At a mist-shrouded villa on Lake Como, an Italian nobleman is grooming a young English tenor. One of them will die by violence. Enter Julian Kestrel, Regency dandy and amateur sleuth, in his fourth case.
Alexander Falkland hasn't an enemy in the world. Young, talented, charming, he shines in every field he enters: law, architecture, the investment market. But one night his luck runs out with a vengeance. In the midst of one of his famous parties, he is found in his study with his head smashed, a blood-stained poker beside him. No wonder the inscription on his gravestone reads: whom the gods love die young. When the Bow Street runners fail to solve the crime, Alexander's distraught father turns to Julian Kestrel, elegant dandy and intrepid amateur sleuth. Soon Kestrel is up to his ears in suspects. But the greatest enigma is Alexander himself. Who was he really? Social reformer or butterfly, devoted husband or rake? In this, his third murder case, Julian must peel off one mask after another, till at last he discovers an Alexander no one knew - except, perhaps, the killer.
In the Haymarket district of London, a Cockney prostitute accidentally intercepts a letter from a client containing an urgent plea for help. When the letter's writer is found dead, police call it a suicide. Amateur sleuth Julian Kestral thinks it's murder and teams up with the prostitute to track a diabolical killer.
THERE'S A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG WOMAN IN JULIAN KESTREL'S BED. UNFORTUNATELY, SHE'S DEAD.Add the unflappable Julian Kestrel to the ranks of great sleuths of ages past. He's the very model of a proper Beau Brummell--except for his unusual willingness to plunge headlong into murder investigations. And an investigation's hard to avoid when, during an elegant weekend at a friend's country estate, a murder victim turns up in his bed. With the help of his Cockney manservant, Dipper, Kestrel sets out to find the killer among the glittering denizens of 1820s London's social stratosphere.
Einundzwanzigmal Suspense mit Gütesiegel. Miriam Grace Monfredo hat die Crème de la Crème der historischen Kriminalliteratur unserer Zeit in einer einmaligen Anthologie von Erstveröffentlichungen versammelt: von Steven Saylors alten Rom bis zu Anne Perrys viktorianischen England ist alles vertreten, was Rang und Namen hat. Ein Muß für alle Krimi-Fans, alle Liebhaber historischer Erzählungen und alle, die eine Schnüffelnase für Qualität haben.