The Rose in the Wheel

This well imagined, carefully detailed, and cleverly plotted debut is set in 1811 London. Regency London knows Constance Tyrone as the conspicuously celibate founder of the St. Catherine Society, dedicated to helping poor women. One rainy November evening a carriage mows down Constance outside her office in St. Catherine's Church. Curiously, while her corpse's one foot is bare, the other is shod in a clean satin slipper though the road where she died is heavy with mud. Why was such a gentlewoman abroad in the night? And if she died under the wheel, whose hands bruised her neck and stole her monogrammed crucifix? Discarding the idea of an accident, Bow Street Runner John Chase forms an unlikely alliance with Penelope Wolfe, wife of the chief suspect in what is ruled Constance's murder. A young mother paying the price for an imprudent marriage, Penelope is eager to clear her husband Jeremy, a feckless portrait painter whose salacious drawings of the victim suggest an erotic interest. Chase's first task is to learn the identity of the mysterious benefactor who goes bail for Wolfe while Penelope traces the victim's last movements. As horrifying murders on the Ratcliffe Highway claim all London's attention, John Chase and Penelope Wolfe discover that it won't be easy to unravel the enigma of the charitable Constance Tyrone, a woman who, by her dauntless courage, revives the legend of the mythical and martyred St. Catherine.