In Prospect of Death

Gil Underwood thinks a trip to London will be a treat for his wife, Lady Cara, after years of sacrifice as a country vicar's wife. He could not be more wrong. His step-son Alistair is immediately tempted into bad habits by Cara's wastrel brother Trentham and Cara herself is reunited with her first love and briefly reverts to being the flighty chit of her carefree youth. Gil imagnes their return to Hanbury will solve the problem, but Sir Gideon Cutteridge follows Cara home and proceeds to scandalize the staid little Spa town. In the meantime Gil's brother C H Underwood has problems of his own. His man servant Toby is now married to the ex-slave Sabrina. A mysterious American arrives to claim that he actually owns Sabrina and wants to take her back to America. Toby feels that Underwood is not fully invested in saving Sabrina as she was instrumental in trying to poison him two years before, on the instructions of her slave-master. Toby is so frantic to save his beloved wife that he seeks the services of the female assassin, Flora Colfax, whom Underwood had failed to capture the year before. Then Cara's erstwhile lover is found stabbed and Gil is the prime suspect. Can Underwood save his brother from the gallows, Sabrina from lifelong slavery and the American from the murderous clutches of Flora?


Genre: Historical Mystery