Bessie was a stunner, and she shone out of that picture like she was going to walk out of it, saying ‘Wotcher, Tom,’ and winking in that way she had. But she couldn’t. She’d stay there stuck fast in paint forever. A chimney sweep in Victorian London’s poverty-stricken East End, Tom Wasp is highly flattered to be asked to model for Valentine Drake, a painter in fashionable Chelsea, especially since his co-model is the beautiful and warm-hearted Bessie Barton, a red-headed stunner who becomes his friend. Grief-stricken when her body is found by mudlarks on the muddy banks of the river Thames, Tom vows to find her murderer. Tracking her pitiful past through London’s seamiest quarters, he discovers the monstrous shadow that hangs over her life, Moonman, from whose clutches Bessie had fled, only to fall into his murderous hands at last. But who is Moonman? Is he one of the Angels, the high-minded group of artists to which Valentine belongs? Or is the truth more terrifying still? Step by step Tom hunts down his quarry through the darkness, guided by his faith that there is goodness in this world as well as evil, and assisted by his chummy, the eleven-year-old Ned. Narrated by Tom himself, this unusual historical thriller whirls the reader from the squalor of London’s Victorian slums to the heady pleasures of its high-life, revealing both the evil and the goodness in both. Tom and Ned make a formidable team as they clean the filthy chimneys of life in this first book of the Tom Wasp series. ‘Victorian England hides a dark underbelly of misery and degradation along with a vicious murderer.’— Kirkus Reviews ‘Tom Wasp is one of the most engaging characters I’ve encountered in yeats’ – Ellen Keith, Historical Novels Review AMY MYERS has been a full-time writer since 1988, and has written a wide range of novels from historical sagas and contemporary romance to crime. She is married to an American and lives in Kent. Many of her novels have been published under the name of Harriet Hudson.

When chimney sweep Tom Wasp visits his friend Eliza Hogg in Newgate Prison in January 1863, on the day before she is due to be hanged, he is surprised to be given the only thing of value she possesses—and even more surprised when that turns out to be a pawn ticket. Tom’s apprentice, twelve-year-old Ned, is disappointed that the pawned item was only a scruffy sailor doll. Some days later however, they find its hidden secret... That secret not only sets the two most notorious gangs of London’s East End, the Rat Mob and the Nichol Gang, at each other’s throats, but brings about a tense international situation at a time when the Prince of Wales is about to marry a Danish princess. When Dinah, the daughter of the leader of the Rat Mob, is found murdered, Tom resolves to find her killer for the sake of his friend, her sister Jemima. Helped by Ned and the self-appointed Bug Destroyer to Her Majesty, the redoubtable Mr Chuckwick, Tom pursues the trail through dangerous waters until he reaches the frightening truth behind two murders and the motives for them. Related by Tom himself, this second book in the Tom Wasp series is a gripping historical mystery that takes the reader back to the squalor of the nineteenth-century East London docklands, as Tom grapples his way through the fog to the truth. ‘Victorian England hides a dark underbelly of misery and degradation along with a vicious murderer.’— Kirkus Reviews ‘Tom Wasp is one of the most engaging characters I’ve encountered in yeats’ – Ellen Keith, Historical Novels Review AMY MYERS has been a full-time writer since 1988, and has written a wide range of novels from historical sagas and contemporary romance to crime. She is married to an American and lives in Kent. Many of her novels have been published under the name of Harriet Hudson.

'So evocative of Victorian London that you'll be brushing Tom Wasp's soot from your shoulders' - Debbie Young, bestselling author Tom Wasp scrapes a living as a chimney sweep, aided by his young assistant, Ned. While the gap between rich and poor is unmistakable in Victorian London, Tom carves out a happy enough life and has plenty of friends, including Clara, the comely landlady of Dolly’s Chop House. So when one of Clara’s patrons is found murdered on her premises, Tom is quick to help, calling on his connections in the police force. Soon it becomes clear that Mr Harcourt’s murder is not merely due to his philandering ways, but is part of something much more literary… Who are the Tarton Ordinaries and how are they linked to the death at Dolly’s? Who really owns the mystery manuscript? And why are Tom’s friend Phineas and Clara’s beautiful daughter Hetty involved? It is up to Tom to find out what links an obscure Elizabethan actor with a slew of nineteenth century deaths in this absorbing and whimsical whodunit. ‘Tom Wasp is one of the most engaging characters I’ve encountered in years’ – Ellen Keith, Historical Novels Review Amy Myers was born in Kent, where she lives near the North Downs. For many years a director of a London publishing company, she is now a full-time writer. Married to an American, she lived for some years in Paris, where, surrounded by food, she first dreamed up her Victorian chef detective series starring Auguste Didier. He was followed by two contemporary series, before she returned to the Victorian age with her chimney sweep Tom Wasp novels. She is also currently writing a 1920s series featuring another chef Nell Drury, and is the author of historical romance and suspense novels. Tom Wasp and her other sleuths also appear in short stories.