Agony Column

A young American arrives in London with nothing but charm and ambition, chasing fortune and love. Instead, he finds a murdered man, a baffling trail of cryptic personal ads, and a killer who keeps disappearing into the fog. Geoffrey West was supposed to be a businessman. Now he's something far more dangerous: a man asking questions that powerful people would rather leave dead and buried. From the polished dining room of the Carlton Hotel to the opium dens of Limehouse, he hunts a truth that keeps slipping away, all while the woman he loves draws ever closer, or pulls further away. Earl Derr Biggers, later immortalized as the creator of Charlie Chan, wrote this fast-paced romance-adventure in 1916, when London still felt exotic to American eyes and the agony column of the newspapers was the internet of its day: a place where secrets passed between strangers. The result is a period piece that crackles with old-fashioned energy, where heroes are clever rather than violent and the city itself becomes a character, glamorous, dangerous, full of hidden doors.