As commander of the River Police, Monk is accustomed to violent death, but the mutilated female body found on Limehouse Pier one chilly December morning moves him with horror and pity. The victim's name is Zenia Gadney. Her waterfront neighbors can tell him little -- only that the same unknown gentleman had visited her once a month for many years. She must be a prostitute, but -- described as quiet and kempt -- she doesn't appear to be a fallen woman....

In Corridors of the Night, nurse Hester Monk and her husband, William, commander of the Thames River Police, do desperate battle with two obsessed scientists who in the name of healing have turned to homicide. The monomaniacal Rand brothers-Magnus, a cunning doctor, and Hamilton, a genius chemist-are ruthless in their pursuit of a cure for what was then known as the fatal "white-blood disease." In Londons Royal Naval Hospital annex, Hester is tending...

"In the course of his tenure with the Thames River Police, Commander Monk has yet to see a more gruesome crime scene: a Hungarian warehouse owner lies in the middle of his blood-sodden office, pierced through the chest with a bayonet and eerily surrounded by seventeen candles, their wicks dipped in blood. Suspecting the murder may be rooted in ethnic prejudice, Monk turns to London's Hungarian community in search of clues but finds his inquiries stymied...