Dead for a Ducat

Mark Savage and the veteran Sam Birkett, retired Chief Inspector of the CID, join forces to investigate the suspected kidnapping of Birkett's son-in-law, which follows the mugging of that son-in-law's closest friend. Or was it a mugging? Was it even a kidnapping? What is the driving force behind a newly formed terrorist group whose exploits are reported in the national press as THE KISS OF DEATH OUTRAGES? Although Savage and Birkett have a slight advantage over the police, the local inspector, he of the pointed head and the big black hat, is never more than a few paces behind. The Wimbledon of this book is neither the Wimbledon of the Wombles, nor that of the tennis tournaments, as the windmill where Baden-Powell wrote SCOUTING FOR BOYS becomes a place of crawling darkness and horror. Mark and Sam pursue this case of frustration and greed, loyalty and murder, from a Chelsea houseboat, to Convent Garden's Jubilee Market, Skalds Wharf, and the famous Prospect of Whitby pub in Wapping, and it all begins for them in a butcher's shop in Wimbledon Village.


Genre: Mystery