Will Thomas, The Hellfire Conspiracy

The Hellfire Conspiracy

Will Thomas

Touchstone, July 2007, 312 pp.

ISBN 141654805X

Enquiry agent Cyrus Barter and his employee Thomas Llewellyn make an interesting team. Llewellyn was unjustly accused of theft by a peer of the realm who attended Oxford with him. The man's peer father made sure Llewellyn was sent to prison, and while there his wife died of consumption. He blames the aristocrat who accused him of theft, and lives to even the score. Barker earned a living working on the China Sea. The empress gifted him with a dog Harm for services rendered, and sent him the slave girl Fu Ying to take care of the dog.

Their latest case begins when a major if the Queen's Guard hires them to find his daughter, who disappeared while his wife was doing charity work in the Bethel Green section of London. At first they believe she was kidnapped by white slavers, until another child was found murdered in the area. Barker and Llewellyn discover from the police that other girls usually in the same manner have been snatched like the latest victim. The killer communicates with Barker via badly written poetry, adding to their concern that they may be too late to save the mayor's daughter, and must settle for catching her killer before he kills again.

This is a terrific historical mystery due to the two protagonists tracking a serial killer in a believable fashion, during a time when the term wasn't ever coined, the methodology for catching them was non-existent and the various police departments were not communicating with each other. Barker is a cipher wrapped in an enigma and covered in a puzzle, making readers curious about his past. Llewellyn is more understandable and likable, because even though he lost his freedom and his beloved wife, he created a new and respectable life for himself. Readers enjoy their escapades in an England that is no more.