This is the sequel to Alexander Rooksmoor’s popular steampunk novel, ‘Grasped in an Iron Hand’. In the summer of 1867, Superintendent Richard Lyndhurst has to set aside all the concerns raised by the deaths during the previous case. Without a pause he assigned to take-over investigating the abduction of Michael Faraday, one of Britain’s leading scientists. The case draws him deeper into the plans of a freakish modern religion who puts a range of technologies, even augmented humans, to use in order to advance its interests. Lyndhurst goes against heartless opponents willing to alter, threaten and blackmail whoever they choose to do their will; cutting even to the core of Scotland Yard and potentially his own family.

The novel combines adventure and a well-researched detective story, blending people and places from real Victorian Britain with well-realised steampunk technologies and seeing how they alter the history our world knew. In Lyndhurst readers will find a detective with the engineering skills to solve crimes in a steampunk world, but dogged by the difficulties that are all too human.