The Bloodstone Murders

Three exciting and thrilling stories which follow the Victorian detective, Rudyard Bloodstone. A Venomous Love was the grand prize winner of the best suspense/thriller in the CLUE Chanticleer awards. Plus: A bonus novella, Choosing Heart or Home.

Silk:

It is the time of Jack the Ripper, the widowed Queen Victoria sits on the throne of England. The whole of London is on edge wondering when or where Jack will kill next. The Palace, Parliament, and the press are demanding the police do more to find him. In another part of London, rough-around-the-edges war hero, Metropolitan Detective Inspector Rudyard Bloodstone has his own serial killer to find. Interdepartmental rivalries, politics, and little evidence to go on hamper the investigation at every turn. In a battle of wills, Bloodstone presses forward following his instincts in spite of the obstacles.

Snifter of Death:

The summer of 1889 was proving to be a strange one for Detective Inspector Rudyard Bloodstone and his partner. They had a sexual pervert loose terrifying women. Far more serious were the murders of influential me, which appeared random with little in common other than they were all killed by arsenic poisoning. Never had Bloodstone and his partner had cases with so little evidence. On top of working the difficult murders, Rudyard has a new lady who captured his heart....a clever, a beautiful and talented lady with a scandalous past.

A Venomous Love:

The killer whispered-"A pretty damsel...worth a pretty risk."It's 1890. A veteran, Detective Rudyard Bloodstone has fought a brutal battle and witnessed war horrors that haunt his nightmares. Now one of those horrors has followed him home from Africa. A vicious predator, the Cape cobra, can kill a man in thirty minutes. A suspect using the snake as a weapon in robberies is terrorizing London. When the crimes escalate into murder, a victim's daughter, Honoria Underhill, becomes the focus of the killer. After several attempts on her life, Scotland Yard threatens to take over the high-profile case. With few leads to follow, Bloodstone and his partner must now fight department politics and catch the killer before Underhill becomes another murder victim.

BONUS NOVELLA:  Choosing Heart or Home

London
Christmas, 1889
The widowed Queen Victoria reigns over an empire on which the "sun never sets," and London is bright with holiday decorations. Detective Rudyard Bloodstone's career is moving along well as Holborn Station's lead investigator. And, his year had gotten even better when he met London's celebrated music hall star, Honeysuckle Flowers.

As he and his lady embark on celebrating the holidays, Rudyard grows homesick for Wales and his family there. He makes plans to see his parents and thinks it is the perfect time to introduce Honeysuckle to them. To his unhappy surprise, his mother paints her with a trollop's brush. His mother is firm: he is loved and missed and most welcome in the family home but not his lady. He must choose between them and to choose means the risk of losing the other.