Reluctantly accepting an assignment to investigate an Ivory cargo theft along the Thames, Victorian sleuth William Monk wonders why his client elected not to report the crime to police.

When a murdered body is discovered in the Thames, clues lead to a heinous child-pornography case that police superintendent William Monk thought he had left behind, in an investigation that threatens his friend Oliver Rathbone and forces Monk to consider painful sacrifices.

An exiled German prince falls from his horse in Victorian England and his wife is accused of murder. It's a scandal of international proportions and the man expected to sort out the truth from the lies is series sleuth William Monk. First though he must polish his manners. By the author of Cain His Brother.

"[N]urse Hester Monk and her husband, William, commander of the Thames River Police, do desperate battle with two obsessed scientists who in the name of healing have turned to homicide. The monomaniacal Rand brothers--Magnus, a cunning doctor, and Hamilton, a genius chemist--are utterly ruthless in their pursuit of a cure for the fatal "white-blood disease." In London's Royal Naval Hospital annex, Hester is tending one of the brothers' dying patients--wealthy...

"In the course of his tenure with the Thames River Police, Commander Monk has yet to see a more gruesome crime scene: a Hungarian warehouse owner lies in the middle of his blood-sodden office, pierced through the chest with a bayonet and eerily surrounded by seventeen candles, their wicks dipped in blood. Suspecting the murder may be rooted in ethnic prejudice, Monk turns to London's Hungarian community in search of clues but finds his inquiries stymied...