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The rival queens : a novel of artifice, gunpowder, and murder in eighteenth-century London / Fidelis Morgan.

by Morgan, Fidelis, 1952-

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William Morrow, [2002].

Women private investigators -- England -- Fiction.

Women household employees -- Fiction.

Women authors -- Fiction.

Great Britain -- History -- William and Mary, 1689-1702 -- Fiction.

London (England) -- Fiction.

0688176844 (acid-free paper)

340 p. ; 24 cm.

Restoration London, 1700. Those intrepid and destitute heroines the Countess Ashby de la Zouche and her maidservant Alpiew -- whose most recent caper involved trying to uncover an adulterer and accidentally unearthing a plot involving corruption, alchemy, transvestitism, treason and murder -- are once more scavenging for scandal to entertain the readers of that scurrilous rag the London Trumpet. With the tireless bailiffs hot on their skirt tails, the Countess and Alpiew are reduced to seeking refuge in a philosophical lecture at the York Buildings concert hall. But their expectations of a dull evening are confounded when one of the players staggers onto the stage, her hands dripping with blood. A doyenne has been decapitated under their very noses! In the resulting chaos the unlikely sleuths find themselves with an abundance of suspects: players, phanatiques, punks, ruffians in pink ribbons, a Punch-and-Judy man -- not to mention a painter with a silver proboscis. Determined to leave no stone unturned, they relentlessly pursue their suspect from the Tower of London to Bedlam, with a brief detour to the wilds of Wapping. Along the way they uncover -- with a little help from Samuel Pepys -- a vast web of intrigue and corruption that extends into the highest echelons of both society and the judiciary.

Historical mystery fiction.

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