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Malcolm Archibald

The second book in the Mendick Mystery Series. Following "The Darkest Walk", when Sergeant Mendick is sent to Dundee to collect a prisoner, he expects a speedy return to London but instead an unfortunate turn of events see him retained to help solve a particularly gruesome murder. Within days Mendick finds himself leading the hunt for the mysterious China Jim who appears to control the criminal classes of Dundee through fear. Mendick's investigations take him from the curling rinks to the foul closes of the disregarded poor, and the bed of the enigmatic Johanna Lednock. More deaths follow and suspicion falls on a handful of men the elite of Dundee society, including Johanna's husband and Mr Gilbride, a local ship owner. Each murder involves apparent cannibalism, shocking even the war-hardened Mendick, who strives to find a connecting link. Dundee seems closed against him apart from the friendly Adam and Mrs Leslie, a prosperous couple who mourn the death of their seaman son. An attempt on Mendick's life convinces him he is nearing the truth, but only when a pawnbroker uncovers a watch stolen from one of the murdered men does Mendick begin to unravel the case.

Fledgling Press

Detective Mendick Victorian Crime

A Burden Shared: The Dundee Murders

Set in 1848, Darkest Walk of Crime sees recently promoted Detective Mendick sent on his first case. Disturbing new evidence suggests the working class Chartist movement is seeking violent action after years of oppression and the defeat in Parliament of its plans for social and political reforms. With the spectre of civil war looming, Mendick goes undercover in the heart of Britain's industrial region - Manchester. He struggles with his loyalties when his sympathies are awoken by the plight of the working classes and the beautiful and enigmatic Chartist, Rachel Scott. But Mendick discovers there is more to the case than he has been led to believe. Soon he becomes wrapped up in a conspiracy that threatens to tear the country apart, and in unravelling this darkest walk of crime will take a perilous journey to the hub of British society.

The Darkest Walk

When Detective Sergeant James Mendick is sent to find the Duke of Mathon's stolen yacht, he soon realises that this is no ordinary case. Trapped aboard a mysterious ship sailing the South Atlantic, he finds himself in a world of cut-throats, criminals and a captain strangely obsessed with Greek mythology. Accompanied only by the likes of Liverpool packet-rats and a spirited fiddle-playing female sailor, Mendick must do his duty and navigate his way to the truth.
Who would go to such lengths to steal a steam yacht, and why?

Following A Burden Shared and The Darkest Walk, The Golden Voyage is the third in the series of Victorian crime novels featuring Scotland Yard Detective James Mendick.