Death and the Jubilee

The second Lord Francis Powerscourt murder mystery opens in the England of 1897. The immensely important Diamond Jubilee, the celebration to mark Victoria’s sixtieth year as Queen and Empress, has attracted 50,000 of her troops from across her dominions and a million Britons to watch her ride in state from Buckingham Palace to St Paul’s Cathedral. Then a body arrives floating in the Thames by London Bridge. Having assisted the crown before in Goodnight Sweet Prince, Lord Francis Powerscourt, a private investigator trusted by the court, is called in. His researches lead him to a mysterious mansion in Oxfordshire, where a second corpse is found, burnt to death. As his investigation into these deaths by water and fire takes him from the trading houses of the City of London to the gloomy Wicklow Mountains of his native Ireland, Powerscourt realizes that more is at stake than solving two murders—upon his success or failure lies the success of the Imperial Jubilee.