Old Scores
A Barker & Llewelyn Novel
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4.6 • 39 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
In 1890, the first Japanese diplomatic delegation arrives in London to open an embassy. Cyrus Barker, private enquiry agent and occasional agent for the Foreign Service Office, is enlisted to display his personal Japanese garden to the visiting dignitaries.
Later that night, Ambassador Toda is shot and killed in his office and Cyrus Barker is discovered across the street, watching the very same office, in possession of a revolver with one spent cartridge.
Arrested by the Special Branch for the crime, Barker is vigorously interrogated and finally released due to the intervention of his assistant, Thomas Llewelyn, and his solicitor. With the London constabulary still convinced of his guilt, Barker is hired by the new Japanese ambassador to find the real murderer.
In a case that takes leads Barker and Llewelyn deep into parts of London's underworld, on paths that lead deep into Barker's own mysterious personal history, Old Scores is the finest yet in Will Thomas's critically acclaimed series.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Thomas's solid ninth Victorian historical (after 2016's Hell Bay), private detective Cyrus Barker and his sidekick, Thomas Llewelyn, meet the members of a Japanese diplomatic delegation who are in London to consider establishing an embassy there. Since the diplomats are also interested in horticulture, they come to view Barker's private garden one morning. That night, Llewelyn discovers that his colleague is missing. He later learns that representatives of the Foreign Office have taken Barker into custody on suspicion of assassinating the Japanese ambassador, Toda Ichigo. The circumstantial evidence is certainly convincing: that afternoon, Ichigo was standing at an open window at the home of Lord Arthur Diosy, the wealthy Orientalist hosting the delegation, when he was shot to death. Barker was found outside the Diosy residence facing the building and in possession of a revolver with one spent casing. The path toward the truth reveals some startling secrets about Barker's past, but the mystery's solution isn't the author's cleverest.
