The Limehouse Heresy

The Limehouse Heresy A priest hangs dead inside a Limehouse mission chapel. Nearby, a message has been written upon the wall, calculated to turn neighbour against neighbour and transform murder into something far more dangerous. The Juwes are the men that will not be blamed for nothing. An old message associated with the Jack the Ripper murders is being used to forge hatred against an innocent community, but to what end? The story begins where the previous case ended. Inspector Morven Flint is bound inside a burning warehouse, the flames closing around him, whilst the enigmatic Edwin Locke lies motionless after being struck by a poisoned dart. Neither man should be walking away from the warehouse, but impossible things have become disturbingly familiar. Soon, Flint and Locke are sent to investigate the death of Father Doherty. The priest appears to have been killed for his faith, but the evidence refuses to support the story laid so carefully before them. The dead man's collar has been placed where it will be found. Witnesses recall an apparently supernatural hooded figure leaving the chapel. Rumours spread rapidly through streets already divided by poverty, suspicion and old grievances. Someone is sowing hatred in Limehouse for a purpose of his own. As Flint and Locke move between Catholic missions, Jewish meeting rooms and the hidden communities clustered beside the Thames, they uncover a campaign of fear in which every act of violence has been arranged for an audience. Behind it stands an enemy they know only too well. Mordecai Shrike continues to torment the city, and his schemes have grown bolder, more theatrical and considerably more ambitious. With the brutal Isiah Ketch carrying out Shrike's orders, the red-eyed boy still in his grasp and Spring-Heeled Jack demanding repayment of an inconvenient debt, Flint finds himself surrounded by men who treat London as machinery to be manipulated. Property, religion and human resentment have all become tools in the same design. Set among the crowded streets, riverside warehouses and interwoven communities of Victorian Limehouse, The Limehouse Heresy is the fourth Flint & Locke mystery, combining gothic horror, conspiracy and dark intrigue with the unsettling suggestion that some crimes are committed not to conceal the truth, but to manufacture one.