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Diamonds & Dust is the first book of the Victorian Murder Mystery series Stride & Cully by Carol Hedges
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When a horrific murder takes place on a dark night in 1860’s London, it changes two women for ever. New light is cast upon past lives they thought they knew so well, and suddenly their futures become intertwined.
The death of her uncle will leave eighteen-year-old Josephine King an orphan, an heiress and the owner of a priceless diamond, The Eye of the Khan. For Lilith Marks, a chance finally arises to end her life as a highly paid prostitute and to prove herself as a serious businesswoman.
Set against the backdrop of the great gas-lit city, the two women are drawn together in their quest to discover just who killed the man they both loved.
Diamonds & Dust is a page-whizzing narrative, with an intricate and absorbing plot that entices you through the teeming streets of Victorian London. If Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle all washed up on a desert island, they might have come up with something like this.
A Word from the Author
Diamonds & Dust is the first in a series of crime novels featuring Detective Inspector Leo Stride and his able assistant Detective Sergeant Jack Cully. They work for the newly formed Detective Division of the Metropolitan Police, based in a building behind Scotland Yard.
The books are all set in the foggy gaslit streets of 1860s Victorian London. Diamonds & Dust features a priceless diamond (The Eye of the Khan), a plucky orphan, Josephine King, and a very wicked Romanian Countess.
I love this period of history and the writers who inhabited it, men like Charles Dickens, and Wilkie Collins. I try to cram my books with all sorts of amazing Victorian characters, plus descriptions of the sights, sounds and smells of the time. Your journey into the past starts here …
(Carol Hedges, July 2016)