London, 1812. At a fashionable address in leafy Mayfair, a far cry from Detective Stephen Lavender’s usual haunts, a guy is found useless in his area. He continues to be brutally stabbed, however the door is usually locked from the inside and the tool is missing.

The deceased is David MacAdam, an Essex businessman with expensive tastes. As Lavender and Constable Ned Woods travel between London and Chelmsford wanting to understand MacAdam’s final hours and unearth the grisly truth, they uncover a tangled internet of deceit behind his stylish facade. The uncommon situations of MacAdam’s death are nothing set alongside the shady character of his life and it appears the home on Park Street reaches the heart of the dark conspiracy.

But when another body turns up, everything they think they’ve learned is thrown into doubt. Can Lavender and Woods discover out who’s behind these shocking murders before more lives are ruined?