A killer is stalking London's women, leaving an ancient coin inscribed with the words "do what you will" by his victims' bodies. It leads Franklin to the watering holes of the spoiled aristocracy, where drunken young men carouse with prostitutes and commit street crimes for sport. A fraternity of young lords dedicated to the pleasures of the flesh beckons--but the initiation fee may be too high.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Library Journal
Benjamin Franklin continues his own precocious form of sleuthing in mid-18th-century London. Investigating the murders of women of dubious virtue, he finds a degenerate group of young aristocrats who kill for sport. Seventh in a great series.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Seventh in a series set in mid-18th-century London and featuring the sleuthing exploits of inventor-statesman Benjamin Franklin as narrated, written, and sketched by his devoted, illegitimate, 15-year-old son Nick (Murder by the Waters, 1995, etc.). Franklin has been asked by blind Chief Magistrate John Fielding for help in solving the murders of two young women found weeks apart in central London, stabbed to death, their hearts cut out. The first was Tuesday Marrowbone, a prostitute; the second, Hester Ward, the wayward niece of Lord Bathurst, was unloved by her uncle but adored by Tom Elstree, her rejected suitor. The killings, and the cruel pranks of the so-called Dionysus Club, are written up in the London Courant by embittered Jack Scratch, n‚ Pyecroft, once of Oxford University, as were Elstree and the Club's swaggering leader Charles Ravenden, Earl of Chalton. As Franklin and Nick realize that all their investigations lead to Ravenden, he appears to challenge their pursuit with invitations to his London house and to the strange, carnally obsessed structures and caves at Chalton, his country estate. The murder of Jack Scratch; the visit of a guilt-racked Elstree; a trip to Oxford to scrutinize past records; and, once again, a brazen invitation from Ravenden to come to Chalton--all bring about a rousing denouement, its drama heightened by a nightmarish storm. Not too much puzzle in the puzzle here, but Nick grows ever more engaging, and the masterful London scene, pulsing with vitality and crammed with everyday horrors, provides an easy-to- take history lesson in a first-class entertainment. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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0 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good, but. . .,
By A Customer
This review is from: London Blood: Further Adventures of the American Agent Abroad: (Benjamin Franklin Mystery) (Hardcover)
I'm still reading this book, the first one in this series that I've read. It seems to be accurate in its historical details, and the mystery itself is intriguing. But the incredibly annoying thing about it is the narrator's constant and continual references to past occurences in the series. I might have given it higher mark but for that.
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