Anne Perry: The Shifting Tide (USA 2005)

From the Publisher:
Reluctantly accepting an assignment to investigate an ivory cargo theft along the Thames, Victorian sleuth William Monk wonders why his client elected not to report the crime to police, a situation that turns more mysterious when the client brings a dangerously ill woman to Monk's wife's health clinic.

Anne Perry: The Shifting Tide. A William Monk Novel. Ballantine Books, ISBN: 0345440102 (March, 2005), 339 p., $7.99.

Anne Perry: The Shifting Tide (UK 2004)

From the Publisher:
When the Maude Idris docks at the Pool of London, laden with ebony, spices and first-grade tusks of ivory collected from her voyage to Zanzibar, Clement Louvain leaves four armed seamen on board to guard the precious cargo. But as soon as the relief for the night watch arrives ready for duty in the morning, he finds the ivory gone and one of the seamen dead. Hindered by his ignorance of the river and its customs, and ashamed of the fact that he so badly requires the huge fees that Louvain is prepared to pay, William Monk nevertheless begins his investigation into the theft and murder. Meanwhile Hester's work at the refuge at Portpool Lane is encountering acute financial difficulties. Sick prostitutes are arriving daily and the medicines needed to help them are running out. When a man arrives promising to pay a huge amount of money for the care of one particular woman, Hester is astonished to meet him. He is none other than Clement Louvain. So who is the woman he is so generously helping? And why is he offering such a substantial sum? Will Monk discover what Louvain is hiding before it is too late?

Anne Perry: The Shifting Tide. A William Monk Mystery. Headline, ISBN: 0747268991 (September, 2004), 408 p., £6.99.

Anne Perry: The Shifting Tide (USA 2004)

From the Publisher:
Anne Perry illuminates the shifting tide of emotions encompassing Queen Victoria's London and the people who live there - aristocrats, brothel owners, thieves, Dickensian ruffians, and their evil keepers. She takes us through dangerous backstreets where the poor eke out their humble livings, and into the mansions of the rich, safe and secure in their privileged lives. Or so they believe.

William Monk knows London's streets like the back of his hand; after all, they are where he earns his living. But the river Thames and its teeming docks - where towering schooners and clipper ships unload their fabulous cargoes and wharf rats and night plunderers ply their trades - is unknown territory.

Only dire need persuades him to accept an assignment from shipping magnate Clement Louvain to investigate the theft of a cargo of African ivory from Louvain's recently docked schooner, the Maude Idris. Monk is desperate for work, not only to feed himself and his wife, Hester, but to keep open the doors of Hester's clinic, a last resort for sick and starving street women.

But he wonders: Why didn't Louvain report the ivory theft directly to the River Police? Why did he warn Monk not to investigate the murder of one of the Maude Idris crew? Even more mysterious, why has Louvain brought to Hester's clinic a desperately ill woman who he claims is the discarded mistress of an old friend? Neither Hester nor Monk anticipates the nightmare answers to these questions... nor the trap that soon so fatefully ensnares them.

Anne Perry: The Shifting Tide. A Novel. Ballantine Books, ISBN: 0345440099 (April, 2004), 328 p., $25.95.