Not since the terrible Whitechapel slayings -- the bloody deeds of a madman known as Jack the Ripper -- have Londoners felt such terror as that aroused by the gruesome beheadings in Hyde Park. If newly promoted Police Supervisor Thomas Pitt does not quickly apprehend the perpetrator, he is likely to lose his own head, professionally speaking.

Clues are few. A headless body slumped in a gently rocking boat on the Serpentine. Another on a bench in a deserted Hyde Park bandstand. That these first victims apparently died without a struggle suggests that they knew, even trusted the person who killed them. Yet Pitt can find no common thread that might bind a respected naval officer, the first victim, to the distinguised musician who is the second to die.

Common folk, gentlemen, the press, politicians, prostitutes, pimps, the powerful secret Inner Circle, all London is howling for blood -- Pitt's own if necessary. Never has Pitt been so hard pressed or so curiously reluctant to make an arrest. And just when he needs her most, Pitt's clever wife, Charlotte, seems unable to help him. Nevertheless, Charlotte will do her part as best she can...



In the haunting mystery, Police Superintendent Thomas Pitt is charged with investigating nothing less than a matter of treason. Someone in the Colonial Office is passing information to Germany about England's African strategy, and the traitor can only be one of a half dozen distinguished public servants. At the same time, Pitt is quietly looking into the sudden, tragic death of his childhood mentor, Sir Arthur Desmond, whose demise, an inquest has concluded, was due to an accidental overdose of laudanum.

Pitt's own verdict is that Sir Arthur has been murdered, and that the crime is connected in some way to the treachery in the Colonial Office. He is certain that the link is a clandestine organization called the Inner Circle that, beneath the cloak of anonymous charitable benevolence, wields a sinister secret power over public affairs and private lives. But despite the apparent cooperation of great men in government, he makes little progress -- until news of a second sensational murder reverberates through London's most elegant drawing rooms.

In the small hours of a May morning, a Thames waterman finds the strangled body of an aristocratic society beauty floating near lonely Traitors Gate. Only then do hard-pressed Pitt and his clever wife, Charlotted, begin to untangle the threads of passion and intrigue, to see clearly the pattern of tragedy and frightening evil that Pitt must deal with, at the risk of his career -- and his life.



The ritual of a prostitute named Ada McKinley in a bedroom on decrepit Pentecost Alley would ordinarily occasion no stir in Victoria's great metropolis. But under the victim's body the police find a Hellfire Club badge inscribed with the name Finlay Fitzjames -- a name that instantly draws Superintendent Thomas Pitt into the case.

Finlay's father -- immensely wealthy, powerful, and dangerous -- refuses to consider the possibility that his son has been in Ada McKinley's bed. The implication is clear: Pitt is to arrest someone other than Finlay Fitzjames for Ada's demise.

But Thomas Pitt is not a man to be intimidated, and with the help of his quick-witted wife, Charlotte, and her well-connected friends, he stubbornly pursues his investigation -- one that twists and turns like London's own ancient streets.