Book description
Samuel Herbert Dougal was intelligent, talented, and the recipient
of a military medal. Outwardly, he seemed to embody all that Victorian
England valued most. But he was also a career criminal whose appetite
for sex and money propelled him through scandal after scandal; through
the courts, prisons and asylums; and from woman to vulnerable woman.
In 1903, the unexplained disappearance of Dougal's latest inamorata, a
wealthy spinster named Miss Holland, began to excite public
speculation. A tireless hunt for the missing lady commenced, but,
having been arrested on a sample charge of forgery, Dougal simply
decided to wait it out. Meanwhile, on the outside, his real wife,
Sarah, who had been the beneficiary of Dougal's schemes over the
course of a decade, had her own plans to escape official scrutiny.
Would Miss Holland's whereabouts be discovered? And who, if anyone,
would be held to account for her disappearance?
