In Victorian London, Supt. Pitt of Scotland Yard investigates the murder of three apparently disparate victims: a band leader, a naval officer and a bus conductor. All three were beheaded. The case leaves him stumped, but fortunately there is his wife.

"The murder of a prostitute named Ada McKinley in a bedroom on decrepit Pentecost Alley should occasion no stir in Victoria's great metropolis, but under the victim's body the police find a Hellfire Club badge inscribed 'Finlay Fitzjames'--a name that instantly draws Superintendent Thomas Pitt into the case. Finlay's father--immensely wealth, powerful, and dangerous--refuses to consider the possibility that his son has been in Ada McKinley's bed....

When a doctor is found brutally murdered in the lurid section of London aptly named "Devil's Acre," even its most hardened residents are stunned. But shock soon turns to horror when Inspector Thomas Pitt discovers three more bodies with the same gruesome "calling card": a stab wound in the back and a rather inexpertly executed mutilation. As Pitt and his wife, Charlotte, race against time to find the killer, a treacherous mystery unfolds. And no one,...

The stylish gentlemen of London’s Paragon Walk are suspects in a novel that “combines murder with a profile of the morals and manners of Victorian society” (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution).
 When innocent Fanny Nash of exclusive Paragon Walk dies in the arms of her exquisite sister-in-law, Jessamyn, Inspector Pitt is assigned to investigate her rape and murder. Every man of Paragon Walk is under...

When the womanizing aristocrat George March is found dead over his morning coffee, the immediate concern of his shocked Cardington Crescent household is quieting the scandal as discreetly-and quickly-as possible. Unfortunately for March's wife, Emily, that means accusing her of the murder. But the family does not take into account Emily's beloved sister, who is none other than the indomitable Charlotte Pitt. Together, Charlotte and her husband, police...

The bodies of two newborn babies have been found in a park in the fashionable London neighborhood of Callander Square. While Inspector Thomas Pitt is fighting to get the squire's aristocratic residents to speak with him, his pretty, well-born wife Charlotte decides to do some detective work of her own. Soon she is unearthing secrets in every house on the square while Thomas tries to discover what would drive a person to murder.

"Commander Thomas Pitt, head of Special Branch, is called to the scene of a brutal explosion in the heart of London. The bomb was set off during an important--and secret--police raid, killing several officers, and the government suspects anarchists are at work. But what Pitt discovers is far more disturbing: the explosion was not a terrorist attack meant to sow chaos, but a calculated means to commit a targeted murder. And the evidence trail leads...

Thomas Pitt must discover whether the son of Lord Landsborough was shot to death as a hostage of anarchists, or if he was an anarchist himself.

As commander of the powerful Special Branch, Thomas Pitt has the job of keeping Britain safe from spies and traitors. So there's no obvious reason why he is suddenly ordered to investigate two minor incidents: the blood, hair, and shards of glass discovered outside the home of naval weapons expert Dudley Kynaston, and the simultaneous disappearance of Mrs. Kynaston's beautiful lady's maid. But weeks later, when the mutilated body of an unidentified...

Based on real events, this is the story of the political manipulations that cause Thomas Pitt to be assigned to the clandestine Special Branch in the dangerous East End of London.