Dead Image: A Detective Sergeant Best Mystery 1

By Joan Lock

The explosion was heard twenty miles away. It killed boatmen and wrecked the exotic villa of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the fashionable St John’s Wood artist. But what caused the 1874 Regent’s Park explosion? Fenian bombs? Sabotage by rival railways or other firms? Or was it something personal? And whose was the other body found in the canal? An artist’s model? The missing King’s Cross barmaid? Or another victim of the so-called Thames murderer? As he struggles to find the answers, Scotland Yard’s Sergeant Ernest Best straddles the conflicting worlds of art, wealth and privilege and that of the poverty-stricken London boatman in an intriguing mystery that will change his life forever. The first book in the Detective Sergeant Best series.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9780752477237

Joan Lock

Ex-nurse and policewoman Joan Lock has written seven Victorian crime fiction titles and eight non-fiction police/crime books, including three on Scotland Yard's first detectives. She has also written short stories, radio plays and radio documentaries, as well as working as a columnist on the leading police journal, Police Review, and Red Herrings, the magazine of the Crime Writers Association.