Jane Dowling Mysteries

A Debt of SilenceLondon, 1899Private detective Jane Dowling is employed to help catch a blackmailer, but the case becomes complicated because it is clear the blackmailer has collected some state secrets in his fishing net as well as personal details. The blackmailer is forced to leave his house and stores his collection in trunks held in depots around London, with a clever card indexing system which fascinates Scotland Yard. Then the bodies of two twins are discovered in trunks, each clutching a letter from him, and he goes on the run. But these bodies are not the women they appear to be.Jane is drawn into the murky world of the blackmailer and the enemies he has created. Those who will stop at nothing to prevent their secrets getting out.

Nightingale LaneLondon, 1901Private Detective Jane Dowling is asked to look for the daughter of a well known leader of the women's emancipation movement. She gets drawn into a wider investigation of a White Slavery gang who are taking young women to a camp in Holland for indoctrination into this foul trade.At the same time, it becomes clear that one of the leading newspaper magnates, Lord Hardcourt, is taking rather too much interest in the criminal life of London's more notorious districts, perhaps because he knows that crime news sells newspapers, and perhaps for other reasons. Jane reluctantly accepts Lord Hardcourt's help, when it becomes clear the London police will not go up against him.And so begins a complicated story of power and corruption. Jane has to try and rescue the women entrusted to her and damage the network, but her biggest enemy may be Lord Hardcourt himself.

Chichester1894Private detective Jane Dowling is invited by the Bishop of Chichester to investigate a series of anonymous letters he has received, because a local prostitute has expired in the cathedral's Magdalene Chapel in a way predicted by the first letter. Jane arrives but is soon ruffling the feathers of the higher orders in Cathedral Close and is sent away to Pevensey Marshes with the dean's assistant to investigate irregularities in church rituals. Then the body of the Cannon Treasurer is found hanging in the cloisters in a way matching the second anonymous letter and Jane is rapidly recalled.Her investigation fails to prevent the third death predicted in the letters, but slowly she comes to understand what is happening, and convinces the police to reopen the investigation into the first death. A trap is set, but not before Jane finds herself a target.