J.C. Briggs Books in Order

The murder of Patience Brooke outside Urania Cottage threatens the refuge Charles Dickens founded for vulnerable women. Determined to protect it, Dickens joins Superintendent Sam Jones in searching London’s slums for a killer and the victim’s hidden history.

A drowned boy proves to be someone other than the missing child Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones were seeking. Further bodies and a mysterious mask image draw them into a hunt for a killer targeting London’s poorest streets.

A skeleton discovered in London recalls a disturbing vision Charles Dickens experienced in Venice. With a governess and music master missing from a politician’s household, he and Superintendent Jones investigate a connection stretching between the two cities.

A shooting during a theatrical performance leaves Charles Dickens holding the gun and facing arrest. With Superintendent Sam Jones’s help, he must identify the real killer before his amateur involvement in crime solving ends with a conviction.

Two young women are dead and a third faces trial for murdering a doctor. Convinced the accused girl is innocent, Charles Dickens recruits Superintendent Sam Jones to uncover the links between the women and the man whose death connects them.

Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones search for a serial killer as Christmas approaches. A magic performance arranged for Bow Street constables offers Dickens a new way to examine the clues and devise a plan to catch the murderer.

A murdered ship captain is found with a copy of Dickens’s novel inscribed to his missing friend Kit Penney. Dickens and Superintendent Jones investigate the vessel’s troubled voyage, trying to clear Kit and explain other suspicious deaths.

Journalist Pierce Mallory’s apparent suicide troubles his friend Charles Dickens. Investigating with Superintendent Jones, he finds evidence of murder and a network of abandoned lovers, jealous husbands, and scandals that could have supplied a motive.

A suspected attempt on Queen Victoria and a missing former opium merchant draw Superintendent Jones into a secret investigation. With Charles Dickens’s help, he follows a trail through London toward dangerous connections with the trade in Canton.

A dying man’s request to find his vanished ward coincides with the murder of an aspiring writer. Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones investigate guarded acquaintances and family jewels, searching for a link between the two mysteries.

While Superintendent Jones pursues fugitive murderer Martin Jaggard, Charles Dickens investigates the disappearance of a servant. Their separate inquiries converge in Clerkenwell, where stolen jewels and signs they are being followed suggest the killer may be closing in.

After showing Dickens his disturbing collection of waxwork women, a ruthless judge is found dead among the figures. A missing effigy and further deaths convince Dickens and Superintendent Jones that the apparent natural death conceals a deliberate crime.

Joan Goss avoids the manor she inherited, troubled by fragments of childhood memory and rumors about her parents. Her goddaughter’s visit prompts a search through family records and her mother’s diary, exposing the legacy of an earlier generation’s trauma.