When London's new Detective
Force was set up in 1842, it had an unexpected and very
enthusiastic fan - Charles Dickens. 'The most famous man in
England' appointed himself the detectives' champion. He wrote
about them in his journal 'Household Words', defended them against
accusations of 'un-Englishness', and even accompanied some of the
detectives on their adventures.
This was the inspiration for 'An Act of Mercy'. The hero of the novel - Detective Sergeant Harry Pilgrim - is based on real-life Victorian detective Jonathan Whicher. Some of the other characters were real people, some are fictional. But the problems they face - prejudice, poverty, and ignorance - were all too real in Victorian society.
London 1850. A city of contrasts. Of scientific marvels, poverty, disease and death. When Detective Sergeant Harry Pilgrim discovers the corpse of a woman in a Hackney cab, the case seems straightforward - until the only suspect is found murdered in his cell.
Pilgrim is hindered in his
investigation by his own dark past - a dead son and a missing wife
- and also by the well-meaning interference of Charles Dickens, who
is serialising Pilgrim's adventures in his journal 'Household
Words'.
The case turns into a deadly game of cat and mouse. But who is the cat and who the mouse?
Charles Dickens decides to take matters into his own hands when he finds his coachman dead in mysterious circumstances.
I was born in a colliery village in the NE of England and grew up in a caravan stuffed full of books, cutting my literary teeth on the great storytellers of the 60's and 70's - Wilbur Smith, Frank Yerby, Mary Renault, and Sergeanne Golon. A degree in English put paid to my literary ambitions for a decade or so, and my first published novels were distinctly un-literary, for the Virgin Books Black Lace series. I live just outside Edinburgh with my husband, three kids, and a skinny dog.
I'm currently writing the next book in the Harry Pilgrim series. Provisionally called 'Beasts to the Slaughter', it's set in the Great Exhibition of 1851.
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'An Act of Mercy' is published by Harper Collins Killer Reads. Perfect for fans of crime fiction!
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