It's 1891, the physician James Mortimer and his new wife, Violet Branscombe, have just returned from a late honeymoon on the Nile and the London papers are full of the brutal murder of Russian politico General Ostyankin. Solomon Solomons, a young East End revolutionary with a violent past, has already been condemned for the crime, and as far as the authorities are concerned, it's an open-and-shut case. Solomon's sweetheart, on the other hand, is convinced of his innocence and asks Dr. Mortimer to intervene. How can Mortimer say no when, after a nasty incident a few months earlier, Violet owes her life to the distraught young woman?So for the second time in his life Dr. Mortimer finds himself cast in the role of sleuth. Politics, he decides, must play a substantial part in the case. The Whitechapel Cafe is full of Communist revolutionaries and the old-style Russia, of which the dissolute general is so obviously a symbol, is nearing collapse. But before Mortimer can save Solomon's life, he has to explore the world of high-class prostitution, investigate the family of a young man ruined by syphilis, and deduce how the young revolutionary, without ever entering the murder room, came to be in possession of eighteen sovereigns belonging to Ostyankin.Violet, too, engages in a little sleuthing of her own, and so near the mark does she come that she inadvertently puts her life in danger. Read Less