When the bodies of two high-profile women are discovered, bearing signs of rape, and an innocent man is accused of the crime, Thomas Pitt's quest for the truth forces him to play a dangerous game of international politics and murder.

A mysterious stranger in outlandish Edwardian garb defaces a painting in the National Gallery. Then a guest at the exclusive Savoy Hotel is fatally bitten by what appears to be a marshland snake. An outbreak of increasingly bizarre crimes has hit London and fittingly come to the attention of the Peculiar Crimes Unit.

"Living on her family's ... estate in Cornwall, England, Alice Edevane is a bright, inquisitive, innocent, and precociously talented sixteen-year-old who loves to write stories. But the mysteries she pens are no match for the one her family is about to endure. One midsummer's eve, after a beautiful party drawing hundreds of guests to the estate has ended, the Edevanes discover that their youngest child, eleven-month-old Theo, has vanished without...