It was the best of times, it was the worst of crimes . . . The ghastly double murder of a society doctor's beautiful wife and her maid reunites celebrated novelist Charles Dickens, his proteǧ Wilkie Collins, and the formidable Inspector Field of the Metropolitan Protectives in another brilliant quest for justice. They manage to defend old friend and ex-burglar Tally Ho Thompson, who's arrested at the scene-but then the case takes the men from the pestilential cells of Newgate to the city's steamiest dives. Gamblers, thieves, swells, whores, and Collins's fiery lover, Irish Meg, will all join in chasing a killer who is the stuff of nightmares

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