Book description
Immaculate officers and rough-bearded riflemen, evangelists,
card-sharps and dandies face death at attention on the sloping deck of
the Birkenhead. But who was the coward hidden among the women in the
lifeboat, and who was the girl who lived to report his shame?
Eight years later in the summer of 1860, the coward's legacy unfolds,
and Verity must piece together a mystery that leads him to uncover an
ingenious plot: a madman's revenge for the loss of the Birkenhead. And
with this knowledge, only Verity can avert a tragedy unparalleled in
English history since the loss of Prince William in the White Ship 700
years before. Francis Selwyn (a pen name of Donald Thomas) was born in
Somerset and educated at Queen's College, Taunton, and Balliol College,
Oxford. He holds a personal chair in the University of Wales, Cardiff,
now Cardiff University. His numerous crime novels include two
collections of Sherlock Holmes stories and a hugely successful
historical detective series written under the pen name Francis Selwyn
and featuring Sergeant Verity of Scotland Yard, as well as gritty police
procedurals written under the name of Richard Dacre. He is also the
author of seven biographies and a number of other non-fiction works, and
won the Gregory Prize for his poems, Points of Contact
. He lives in Bath with his wife.
