Keeping Bad Company
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Private investigator Liberty Lane faces the most challenging case of her career in this absorbing mystery|London, 1840. Private investigator Liberty faces a conundrum when her younger brother Tom, an East India Company employee, is unexpectedly summoned to London to give evidence at an official enquiry into the murder of a wealthy merchant’s assistant, found with his throat cut en route to Bombay. A connection between the dead man and escalating rows with China over the lucrative opium trade has caused the government concern. Can Liberty solve a murder that took place six months previously almost five thousand miles away?|"This is a delightful mix of historical mystery and cozy with a strong woman protagonist"|"Liberty’s fifth case nicely balances the exotic history of the East India Company, whose private army rules India for British gain, with a mystery that offers a wide range of possible evildoers"
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The return of Liberty Lane's younger brother, Tom, to England from India, where he worked for the powerful East India Company, sets the stage for Peacock's solid fifth Victorian historical featuring the female private inquiry agent (after 2011's When the Devil Drives). Tom has been summoned to appear before a parliamentary committee looking into the company, especially its role in the opium trade. The inquiry inevitably focuses on the murder in India more than six months earlier of a man named Burton, the assistant of Alexander McPherson, a merchant who branched off from the East India Company to establish his own successful business. Against many obstacles, Lane must try to solve Burton's murder. She gets a fresher trail to follow after a related killing in London. A well-executed plot compensates for a solution that's somewhat less clever than others in the series.
