In the Dead of Night: A Novel. Volume 2 (of 3)
1898
Lionel Dering goes to bed after a bitter argument with his friend Percy Osmond. He wakes in the dead of night to find the man murdered in his room. Now he stands accused, his life hanging on the verdict of a trial that approaches like a slow execution. This is Victorian sensation fiction at its most addictive. Around Lionel's unfolding catastrophe, Edward Cope drifts toward a wedding he doesn't want, his heart fixed on someone other than his fiancée Jane Culpepper. Jane, meanwhile, watches her engagement crumble while her eyes drift toward the man awaiting trial. The old Park Newton estate seethes with secrets, arguments overheard, alibis doubted, and the terrible weight of an innocent man trying to prove himself guilty only of surviving. The trial is coming. Every character has something to conceal, something to lose. For readers who crave the theatrical emotional intensity of Wilkie Collins and the tangled webs of Victorian society, this is a story where a single night of violence reverberates through every relationship left standing.
