At the start of Lake's lurid 13th Georgian historical (after 2008's Death in Hellfire
), apothecary John Rawlings, summoned by his pregnant mistress, joins a London carriage bound for the West Country. Other passengers include Jack Beef (aka the Black Pyramid), a bare-knuckle fighter, and his agent. Rawlings, who does detective work for Sir John Fielding of Bow Street, soon gets embroiled in a murder case after a fellow traveler is bludgeoned to death during an overnight stop at an inn. While the Black Pyramid disappears for many pages, Rawlings, with the help of local constable Tobias Miller and fellow Bow Streeter Joe Jago, manages to track down and interrogate all the other passengers on the ill-fated coach. Coincidences abound, as Rawlings observes midway through his deadlocked investigation. In the end, Lake offers a bizarre, if not wholly original resolution to a mystery that will strike many readers as an 18th-century twist on Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express
. (Sept.)
