Once Wrexford learns that there’s to be a secret auction for the papers, he determines with the help of his family and friends to find them first and uncover a killer.Ī charming, action-packed mix of historical mystery and Regency romance.Īnother sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.Ī week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. In honor of a celebration of peace, London is awash in visiting leaders and royals, including the czar of Russia. Quill, who often criticizes government policy.

The representative, who’s not above a little blackmail, hints that his higher-ups know that Charlotte is the gadfly illustrator A.J. The boys soon become friends, and Peregrine joins the Wrexfords in London, where a government representative asks Wrexford to find the person who killed Willis and stole the design for a revolutionary rifle and, of course, to recover the papers setting forth that design.

But Peregrine’s Uncle Belmont, who turns out to be married to Charlotte's brother's sister-in-law, resents the fact that his older brother’s late-in-life son will inherit the estate he'd long regarded as his. The late Jeremiah Willis-whose father was a formerly enslaved man from Virginia and mother a White Englishwoman-was an inventor of note, and Wrexford and Charlotte soon learn that his orphaned nephew, young Peregrine, stands to inherit a large estate from the other side of his family. So when their dog turns up a body floating in Hyde Park's lake, the Serpentine, their curiosity is piqued. The Earl of Wrexford and his wife, Charlotte, have had a great deal of experience with mysteries, and their wards, Raven and Hawk, former street urchins with a scientific bent, are always up for a new adventure. An aristocratic sleuthing duo seeks a killer in Regency London's back alleys and drawing rooms.

Murder at the serpentine bridge