Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe Murder Mysteries

She's an unconventional lady who has traveled the world, practices the art of self-defense most excellently, and has an interesting tattoo in—ahem—a very unusual place. He's a former member of the Metropolitan Police, now a private investigator, who grew up on the poverty-ridden streets of Edinburgh and has worked the dangerous back alleys of London's notorious East End. A vicious murder brings them together in a race against time that takes them from the sordid back streets of London into the elite private clubs of the powerful and rich.

A severed foot. Fingerprints left on a wine glass. A secret cipher code. The scent of orange and cinnamon left behind by the murderer. Mikaela Forsythe, adventuress, author, and now private investigator, is back. She is pulled into a deadly case that may just see her friend, actress Theodora Templeton, sent to prison for murder when a severed foot is found in her bed, and a high-ranking official has gone missing. Is it a crime of passion or something far more sinister?

The past reaches out to the unlikely investigative team of Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe when a man she was once engaged to marry seeks her assistance to find his young runaway son. However, a simple case of following the clues left behind becomes far more as the search unravels her former fiancé’s secrets. Mikaela is determined to find the answers.

Ghostly images appear and float across the stage, objects levitate into the air, and a beautiful assistant disappears inside a glass box, then reappears inside a second glass box. All while the audience at the Crystal Palace, including amateur investigator Mikaela Forsythe, watch the performance. Is it real? Then, an evening with her friend, Theodora Templeton, attending the one-night performance by master illusionist Jean Luc Betard, takes a ghastly turn and plunges Mikaela headlong into murder when the illusionist's young assistant is found dead at the end of his newest stunt.

Old Town, Edinburgh. In a squalid tenement where poverty, rats, and disease are rampant, a young woman who worked in a local tavern lies dying. Just another number and bound for a pauper's grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard. Alone, his grandmother the only family left, young Angus Brodie hides in the shadows nearby, the bronze medallion his dying mother pressed into his hand clenched in a tight fist as the constables carry her body from the tenement. And a name overheard—the man who was there that night, seen by the woman who collected the rents.

When the family receives a second photograph of their daughter, who is quite obviously dead, their simple inquiry becomes a murder investigation. But this is no routine investigation as another photograph is received, and another body is found. As more bodies turn up, and with no known motive, Brodie and Mikaela must confront the fact that the murderer is brilliant, disturbingly talented, and quite possibly insane. What drives this cold-blooded killer to capture the last moments of their victims with such haunting clarity?

Mikaela's inquiry services are requested by the wife of a prominent London surgeon after he has disappeared, while Brodie is sent to track down rumors of a planned attack in London by the anarchist known as the Black Hand. It is a time of dangerous unrest across the whole of Europe, and they realize the two cases may be connected when the doctor is found murdered at a secret office in the East End where he performed certain procedures. It is also the place where the anarchist was followed, only to disappear. What was the reason for secrecy regarding that specific office?

Ten years earlier, after Brodie refused to divulge the name of his source in a murder case, Chief Inspector Abberline threatened to have charges brought against him for withholding evidence. The case might very well have won Abberline the coveted new title of Commissioner of Police, and when the "source," a woman, suddenly disappeared, Abberline couldn't forgive Brodie.