Spencer & Reid Mysteries

Leonora Spencer has an acquaintance with death. Sixteen years ago, only she survived the brutal murder of her family. Now, as an assistant in her uncle's London morgue, she uses her photographic memory to catalogue details for his coroner reports. She also isn't opposed to helping him during postmortems if his skilled hands begin to shake. After a thief breaks into the morgue and steals a locket from a young woman's corpse, Leo is determined to understand why, even if it means going against Detective Inspector Jasper Reid's express orders to keep her nose out of it. Born and bred in the East End slums, Jasper Reid's recent promotion to the detective's branch at Scotland Yard is a long step up from his murky past . . . a past he can't afford to reveal to anyone. The last thing he needs is a convoluted case concerning the well-known eccentric Leo Spencer. As if her stubborn resolve to undermine his investigation isn't bad enough, matters deteriorate when Jasper realizes the criminals he associated with as a lad may also be involved. When the missing locket and a handful of suspicious deaths point to a mysterious buried object, Jasper grudgingly accepts Leo's help to locate it. But someone is watching them, and the more they uncover about a deadly blackmail plot, the closer Leo and Jasper get to becoming the killer's next targets.

Murder never shocks Leonora Spencer. Violence is a fact of life in Victorian London, and most of the corpses Leo attends to inside her uncle's city morgue are its victims. But when she witnesses a woman's death at a popular night club, and then follows a suspicious hooded figure retreating from the scene, Leo lands herself in the center of another complex Scotland Yard investigation-right where Detective Inspector Jasper Reid doesn't want her. In the several weeks since the unconventional Leo Spencer helped him solve an explosive case, Jasper has kept the willful morgue assistant at arm's length. Now, the bride of one of the city's most dangerous crime lords has been poisoned, and his primary witness is the very woman he's been trying to avoid-if only because she is as fascinating as she is irritating. Disregarding strict warnings to stay out of it, Leo insists on helping Jasper sort through his inquiry. When a death portrait of two mysterious children is found in the victim's handbag, and an unsolved Jane Doe case that haunts Jasper resurfaces, he and Leo begin to question if more than one crime-and killer-is at play. But discovering the truth might also mean walking into a carefully laid trap.