The Hangman’s Secret - Laura Joh Rowland Audiobook

Written by Laura Joh Rowland
Read by Alex Tregear
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps

The Hangman’s Secret
Victorian Mystery Series, Book 3
Publisher: Dreamscape Media, LLC
Release date: January 8, 2019
Duration: 10:48:17

A Victorian sleuth’s probe of a suspicious suicide leads to a deeper mystery surrounding a notorious serial killer.London, 1890.

Photographer Sarah Bain’s success as an amateur sleuth has led to a job as a crime-scene photographer for the Daily World. Together with her handsome sidekick, Lord Hugh Staunton, and street urchin and factotum Mick O’Reilly, are summoned to the goriest crime scene they’ve ever encountered. A pub owner named Harry Warbrick has been found hanged. . His severed head rests in a noose above a pool of blood. But evidence at the scene convinces Sarah that this was not suicide but murder. His murder becomes a sensation because he was England’s top hangman.

Sir Gerald, owner of the Daily World, announces that they—meaning Sarah and her friends—will investigate and solve Warbrick’s murder before the police do. She and her friends discover a connection between Warbrick’s murder and the most notorious criminal he ever executed: “baby farmer” Amelia Carlisle who is believed to have killed countless children. Something happened at Amelia’s execution.

The Official Secrets Act forbids the seven witnesses present to divulge any information about it. But Harry had a bad habit of leaking tips to the press. What is the secret, and who hanged the hangman?

Backstories of the protagonists add texture to Rowland’s tale, from Hugh’s estrangement from his family because of his homosexuality to Sarah’s fractious relationship with her criminal father to Mick’s desperate crush on beautiful actress Catherine Price. Rowland’s engaging team of sleuths and a colorful rogues’ gallery of suspects make her third Victorian mystery a genuine page-turner.