The Woman Who Dances at Executions (The Newgate Cipher Mysteries, #1)

On execution mornings, Ianthe Rooke dances outside Newgate Prison.

The newspapers call her the Gallows Dancer. The authorities call her a public disgrace. The condemned know her as something else: the woman who delivers the messages they dare not entrust to paper.

Every turn, gesture, ribbon and deliberate pause carries meaning.

When confidential clerk Ephraim Marden is hanged for the murder of his employer's daughter, barrister Vincent Ormesby expects only to witness the final consequence of a case he failed to win. Marden confessed. The evidence condemned him. Nothing remains except the uncomfortable duty of watching the sentence carried out.

Then Ianthe begins to dance.

Her coded message is meant for Vincent:

The dead woman entered the house after I killed her.

Marden struck Beatrice Cleeve and believed he had taken her life. But if Beatrice survived long enough to leave the room and return, someone else murdered her after he fled.

Vincent is determined to discover what Ianthe knew before the execution. Ianthe is equally determined to remind him that a barrister who accepted a convenient confession has little right to demand another person's secrets.

Their investigation leads back into the wealthy Cleeve household, where nearly everyone concealed part of Beatrice's final evening. Her father fears the disappearance of damaging business records. Her fiancé has invented a romantic future she never intended to share. Her stepmother hides an unlikely alliance. The family physician altered his notes. A frightened maid remembers details no respectable witness considered important.

And somewhere among them is a murderer who allowed an innocent man to carry his guilt to the scaffold.

Dark, atmospheric and intricately plotted, The Woman Who Dances at Executions is a Victorian fair-play mystery about coded final words, false confession and the dangerous difference between legal guilt and truth.