A Thief in the Night

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E.W. Hornung

First published in 1899, The Amateur Cracksman was the first collection of stories detailing the exploits and intrigues of gentleman thief A. J. Raffles in late Victorian England. Raffles was E. W. Hornung's most famous character. Popular in its day, the book led to three later works: The Black Mask and A Thief in the Night, both collections of short stories, and Mr. Justice Raffles, a complete novel. In public a popular sportsman, in private a cunning burglar with a weakness for valuable jewelery, Arthur Raffles, with the help of his side-kick Bunny Manders, always manages to thwart the investigations of Scotland Yard's Inspector Mackenzie.

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Anne Perry

Few authors have written more mesmerizingly about Victorian London than Anne Perry. Readers enter her world with exquisite anticipation, and experience a rich variety of characters and class: aristocrats living in luxury, flower sellers on street corners, ladies of the evening seeking customers on gaslit streets, gentlemen in hansom cabs en route to erotic diversions unknown in their Mayfair mansions. Now Perry gives her myriad fans the book they've been waiting for--the novel in which William Monk breaks through the wall of amnesia and discovers at last who he once was.DEATH OF A STRANGERFor the prostitutes of Leather Lane, nurse Hester Monk's clinic is a lifeline, providing medicine, food, and a modicum of peace--especially welcome since lately their ailments have escalated from bruises and fevers to broken bones and knife wounds. At the moment, however, the mysterious death of railway magnate Nolan Baltimore in a sleazy neighborhood brothel overshadows all else. Whether he fell or was pushed, the shocking question in everyone's mind is: What was such a pillar of respectability doing in a seedy place of sin? Meanwhile, brilliant private investigator William Monk acquires a new client, a mysterious beauty who asks him to ascertain beyond a shadow of a doubt whether or not her fiance, an executive in Nolan Baltimore's thriving railway firm, has become enmeshed in fraudulent practices that could ruin him.As Hester ventures into violent streets to learn who is responsible for the brutal abuse of her patients, Monk embarks upon a journey into the English countryside, where the last rails are being laid for a new line. But the sight of tracks stretching into the distance revives memories once stripped from his consciousness by amnesia--as a past almost impossible to bear returns, eerily paralleling a fresh tragedy that has already begun its inexorable unfolding.From the Hardcover edition.

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M.J. Carter

"Blake and Avery return in the stunning sequel to M. J. Carter's lauded fiction debut, The Strangler Vine. London, 1841. Returned from their adventures in India, Jeremiah Blake and William Avery have both had their difficulties adapting to life in Victorian England. Moreover, time and distance have weakened the close bond between them, forged in the jungles of India. Then a shocking series of murders in the world of London's gutter press forces them back together. The police seem mysteriously unwilling to investigate, then connections emerge between the murdered men and the growing and unpredictable movement demanding the right to vote for all. In the back streets of Drury Lane, among criminals, whores, pornographers, and missionaries, Blake and Avery must race against time to find the culprit before he kills again. But what if the murderer is being protected by some of the highest powers in the land?"--

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traduit de l'anglais par Bernard Turle

Ackroyd re-wrote the rules of the crime thriller with this cleverly conceived story, set in a very believable recreation of Victorian London. The author effortlessly blends fact and fiction as Dan Leno, king of the music-hall comedians is dragged into the investigation of one of London’s most notorious murders. When Karl Marx and Oscar Wilde are connected to the same crime the possibilities are endless. According to the Independent on Sunday ‘Ackroyd has pulled off the greatest coup of all, a four square crime novel…as aesthetically pleasing as it is morally shocking’. And the Observer called it ‘a flawlessly good read’.