Watchers of the Dead
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
An escaped assassin. A group of cannibals on the run. A threatening letter. Newspaper reporter Alec Lonsdale is on the case in this compelling Victorian mystery.
“All Londoners will see what the Watchers are capable of on Christmas Eve …"
December 1882. Attending the opening of the new Natural History Museum, Pall Mall Gazette reporter Alec Lonsdale and his colleague Hulda Friederichs are shocked to discover a body in the basement, hacked to death. Suspicion immediately falls on a trio of cannibals, brought over from the Congo as museum exhibits, who have disappeared without trace.
Alec however has his doubts – especially when he discovers that three other influential London men have been similarly murdered. When he and Hulda discover a letter in the victim’s home warning of a catastrophic event planned for Christmas Eve, the pair find themselves in a race against time to discover who exactly the Watchers are and what it is they want …
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
At the start of Beaufort's intriguing second Victorian mystery (after 2018's Mind of a Killer), Pall Mall Gazette reporters Alec Lonsdale and Hulda Friederichs are covering the opening of London's new Natural History Museum in December 1882 when they discover Professor Dickerson, the museum's leading zoologist, chopped to death in the basement. The obvious suspects are three members of a cannibalistic African tribe, who have been transported to London to serve as living museum exhibits and disappeared at the same time Dickerson was last seen alive. Lonsdale and Friederichs discover that the professor is the latest in a series of murders targeting prominent men who belong to a mysterious group called the Watchers. When the pair search Dickerson's home, they find a letter referencing an "unspeakable Happening" the Watchers have planned for Christmas Eve. Meanwhile, Lonsdale is disquieted by tension with his well-born fianc e. Despite some convoluted plotting, Beaufort (the pseudonym of Susanna Gregory and Beau Riffenburgh) offers a vivid, nuanced vision of late-Victorian Britain. Readers fascinated by the era will find much to savor.
