Christopher Huang

Pretender's Murder

“A cracking good mystery, almost impossible to put down.” —Booklist The year is 1925. A labyrinth of roads and rails spirals out from the bones of a nearly forgotten settlement. Londinium. Once the far-flung edge of the vast Roman Empire, it is now the seat of a greater one. Few have given more for the Empire than Colonel Hadrian Russell. Robbed of his four sons by the Great War, he now holds court as the acting president of the Britannia, a prestigious soldiers-only club in London. But when the Colonel is shot and thrown out the club’s front window, it seems the shadows of the Great War may extend further than previously thought. Lieutenant Eric Peterkin, newly installed secretary at the Britannia, finds himself thrust into the role of detective after Scotland Yard points fingers at friends he knows are innocent. But is the true murderer an unknown spy? Or a recently resurfaced friend of the Colonel’s dead sons? Or is it one of the Colonel’s four widowed daughters-in-law, who by all appearances paid him complete devotion? Accusations from personal betrayal to wartime espionage mount among the suspects as Eric's investigation draws him back to scenes and sites of a war he’s sought to leave behind. From the greening fields of Flanders and the springtime streets of Paris to the sterile wards of a Swiss sanatorium, and back to the Britannia itself, Eric finds that even myths leave behind bones.