The Man in the Shadows

by Alys Clare Book 3 in the World’s End Bureau Mysteries series.

First published 2022

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4.3(716)

London, August 1881. Reverend James Jellicote asks the World’s End Investigation Bureau to help Yelisaveta, an elderly Jewish refugee who escaped violence in Russia only to lose her eleven-year-old grandson Yakov after reaching London. Lily Raynor and Felix Wilbraham take up the search for the missing child as the bureau’s growing caseload also draws them towards a disputed rural murder.

The two investigations move between London and Kent and expose people whose testimony carries little weight against prejudice or official certainty. Yelisaveta’s flight from Russian pogroms gives the novel an international background, while the cases themselves focus on migration, wrongful accusation and the limits of Victorian justice.