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THE DEATH OF SIR MARTIN MALPRELATE
By: Adam Roberts
Datura Books
November 2023
On Sale: November 14, 2023
Featuring: Mr. Bryde
400 pages
ISBN: 1915523028
EAN: 9781915523020
Kindle: B0BPWRY7DX
Paperback / e-Book
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Mystery Private Eye
A gothic tale of murder and corruption set in 1840s Victorian London, taking inspiration from our most famous 19th century writers.
History, Politics and class collide in this suspenseful crime novel, following the death of a railway baron and the impact it has on the suffocated community.
Railway Baron, Sir Martin Malprelate of the 1840s, has been laying waste to the warren of Camden; buying up houses and clearing streets for his new railway line linking King’s Cross with the prosperous town of Middlemarch. He stands to make his fortune ever more vast and to earn the loathing of all who attempt to stand up to him.
Little wonder, then, that he meets a violent end on a foggy street after walking out of a particularly bitter meeting with outraged residents facing eviction. But the cause of his death causes more wonder. How could he have possibly fallen beneath the wells of a speeding spectral train running on tracks not yet even built?
Sir Martin’s death is investigated by the police, but the company employ one of its senior engineers, Mr Bryde, to pursue his own investigation. Bryde uncovers a network of resentment and conspiracy, agitating workers, scheming shareholders, corrupt politicians and a gallery of varied and grotesque characters – all of whom had some stake in the old man’s death.
Lacing it’s realism with both social commentary and the gothic imaginations of the time The Death of Sir Martin Malprelate is a vivid recreation of a London stalked by poverty and haunted by visions of demons and ghosts; a world of slums, lavish wealth and opium dens.
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