Tom Wasp and the Newgate Knocker (Five Star Mystery Series)

When Victorian chimney sweep Tom Wasp visits his friend Eliza Hogg in Newgate Prison in January 1863, on the day before she is due to be hanged, he is surprised to be given the only thing of value she possesses - and even more surprised when that turns out to be a pawn ticket. Tom's apprentice, twelve-year-old Ned, is disappointed that the pawned item was only a scruffy sailor doll. Some days later however they find its hidden secret. That secret not only sets the two most notorious gangs of London's East End, the Rat Mob and the Nichol Gang, at each other's throats, but brings about a tense international situation at a time when the Prince of Wales is about to marry a Danish princess. When Dinah, the daughter of the leaders of the Rat Mob, is found murdered, Tom resolves to find her killer for the sake of his friend, her sister Jemima. Helped by Ned and the self-appointed Bug Destroyer to Her Majesty, the redoubtable Mr Chuckwick, Tom pursues the trail through dangerous waters until he reaches the frightening truth behind two murders and the motives for them. This gripping historical mystery is related by Tom, who takes the reader back to the squalor of nineteenth-century East London dockland, as he grapples his way through the fog to the truth Tom Wasp and the Newgate Knocker is the second in the Tom Wasp series, following Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner. Amy Myers is also known for her Auguste Didier series of crime novels with a Victorian master chef sleuth, and for her current modern series featuring Peter and Georgia Marsh. She and her American husband currently live in Kent, UK, about forty miles from London's East End where Tom Wasp carries out his chimney sweeping (and sleuthing) duties.