The Red Ribbon
The gripping spy series shortlisted for the SpyMasters Book Prize 2025
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
SPY HUNTER SHORTLISTED FOR THE SPYMASTERS BEST ESPIONAGE NOVEL OF 2025, ALONGSIDE THE PEACOCK AND THE SPARROW BY I.S. BERRY AND GABRIEL'S MOON BY WILLIAM BOYD
The thrilling follow up to The Irregular: A Different Class of Spy, featuring Wiggins - an ex-soldier who was trained as a child by Sherlock Holmes.
'H.B. Lyle has found the golden thread between Bond and Holmes' Giles Foden
'Impressive period detail and sharp dialogue' Daily Mail
'A thrilling story of espionage, murder and the creation of the Secret Service' Charles Cumming
Now an agent of the newly-formed Secret Service, Wiggins is still determined to track down Peter the Painter, the murderer of his friend Bill.
Meanwhile, Captain Kell is under pressure to identify who is leaking vital information from the government, and his wife Constance is getting dangerously close to the more militant faction of suffragettes.
When Wiggins traces one of the old Baker Street Irregulars gang to a mysterious club in Belgravia, the action follows thick and fast in another brilliantly compelling novel of betrayal and suspense.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Lyle's entertaining if uneven sequel to 2017's The Irregular, it's 1910 and the new British Secret Service is up and running with Vernon Kell heading domestic operations and Wiggins, a former Baker Street Irregular, as his sole investigator. When Kell is tasked with probing high-level leaks that benefit Germany, Kell must consider some of the government's most powerful officials as potential sources. Rival agencies are trying to shut Kell's office down, Home Secretary Winston Churchill demands a loan of Wiggins's services, and Kell's suffragist wife, Constance, is hiding secrets. Meanwhile, Wiggins is also helping a friend look for a missing 18-year-old girl. Wiggins's search leads him to the so-called Embassy of Olifa, actually an elite brothel engaged in not just sexual but also violent crimes. The rapid switching early on between story lines and secondary characters can be confusing, but later scenes between the irrepressible but infallible Wiggins and Constance, who shares his remarkable gift for detection, are clever and witty. Readers will hope to see plenty more of Wiggins.
