Salop House Long Blurb

 When death is a daily horror, does one more matter? Ireland, 1845, famine beginning. A woman’s body is found outside Salop House, Co. Wicklow with her head smashed in. Five years ago, two people were hanged for a near identical murder of a servant girl. Rumour then implicated the noble Pursiver family and now returns to haunt them. Family friend John Sheldrick, a young naive Englishman, is asked by his masters at Dublin Castle to exonerate them. But are they innocent? Captain Hugh Pursiver has secrets. His sisters Mary and Agnes are decidedly odd. As Ireland falls part, Sheldrick watches, horror-struck.

Then there’s the matter of the missing boy. Boys go missing all the time in Dublin, but never do they leave one of those expensive new photographic pictures behind. Sheldrick investigates Dublin’s seamy underside. Also why are the Irish Constabulary so interested in Sheldrick’s other friend, Home Rule activist Oliver O’Hannan? And what does the mischievous and headstrong Leonora Butler have to do with it all? Has Sheldrick been set up to fail?