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The papers call it suicide. The deceased's father doesn't. But when Inspector Lestradc of Scotland Yard investigates the death by duelling pistol of Anstruther Fitzgibbon, 27, son of the Marquess of Bolsover, his suspicions of foul play are immediately aroused.
One of Britain's leading athletes, 'nimbler than a wallaby on heat', Fitzgibbon is the first victim in a series of murders which threatens to extinguish the exhilaration of the Olympic Games held in London that glorious summer of 1908.
As the capital plays host to an army of athletes from the Empire, Europe and the United States, international politics rears its ugly head: a respected German journalist is discovered with an ornate paper-knife embedded in his back.
When a hurdler of the Ladies' Team falls victim to her own bust improver (dubbed 'the killer corset'), fingers are pointed in all directions and not least of Lestrade's worries is that his leading lady's husband is an American detective with a short temper and the physique of a brick privy.
MJ. Trow is endlessly inventive in his affectionate portrayal of Sholto Lestrade and his eccentric antics in the seething underworld of Edwardian England.
book reviews
- Kirkus Reviews
Understated humor and brisk pacing are the main draws in this… Lestrade mystery. - Marcel Berlins, The Times
‘Splendidly shaken cocktail of Victorian fact and fiction ... Witty, literate and great fun.’
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