Winner of the CWA Historical Dagger Award
The North-West Frontier, 1910. The screams of a wounded British officer abandoned at the bottom of a dark ravine are heard by a young Scottish subaltern. Ignoring the command to retreat back to base the Highlander sets out alone, with dagger in hand, to rescue his fellow officer from the Pathan tribesmen who are slowly torturing him to death.
Over a dozen years later the backwash of this tragedy

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Joseph Sandilands is back home from India enjoying the nightlife of Jazz Age London. After returning home late from a disappointing date, he is called to the posh Ritz Hotel, where Dame Beatrice Joliffe, the socially prominent founder of the Wrens (Women' s Royal Navy Society), lies dead. A broken window and a missing necklace point to a burglary gone wrong, and Scotland Yard wants Sandilands to resolve the case quickly and discreetly. When Dame Beatrice's...

Returning to England only to discover that his role at the Metropolitan Police has expanded to include the Special Irish Branch, Joe Sandilands struggles with regional terrorism while clashing with a Russian princess who is running a spy network out of Kensington.

At dawn one morning in 1933, an amateur dowsing team searching the banks of the Thames for precious metals unearths the body of a young woman with a priceless gold coin in her mouth. The case falls on Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard Joe Sandilands's turf, but he's been given another assignment -- and a very high-profile one. London is hosting a historic economic conference to try to solve the Global Depression and political tensions are running...