Superintendent Pitt investigates a blackmail ring, threatening to ruin the reputation of prominent people in Victorian London. It all begins with the discovery of a dead body outside a general's house. By the author of Brunswick Gardens.

Thomas Pitt arrives at a devastating bombing in Lancaster Gate to find two policemen dead and three more gravely wounded. London's anarchists are blamed, but as Pitt and Inspector Tellman investigate they find it looks increasingly like a personal vendetta against those particular men. Did they lie about a drugs raid that went fatally wrong, and let an innocent man hang? The idea of police dishonesty cuts Tellman to the quick--he joined the force...