Clock Struck One

Dora's fiancé refuses to say why he broke off their engagement after an argument with her guardian. Her guardian is now dead, beaten in his study. Everyone around her seems to know something, but no one will speak. So Dora does what no one expects: she investigates herself. Julian Edermont spent twenty years in near-seclusion, terrified of an unknown threat that never materialized until the night he died. The secret he revealed to Dr. Allen Scott was damning enough to destroy a marriage and silence a doctor who might otherwise have talked. Now Dora must untangle two decades of hidden fears and the particular cruelty of men who think they can protect women by keeping them ignorant. Fergus Hume wrote with the plotting precision of a master, and this mystery moves with the relentless tick of its title. For readers who love Victorian procedurals, locked-room puzzles, and heroines who refuse to be kept in the dark.