When Cassie Pengear's cousin Milly asks her to help a friend leave a blackmail payment at a party, Cassie's first impulse is to say no. That is until she realizes Milly will help no matter what she says, and when, not if, Milly gets in trouble, it will be up to her to get Milly out of it. But the payment doesn't quite go as planned, being interrupted by a dead body. And as Milly was involved in the payment, Cassie finds herself dragged into investigating the murder and the blackmail in the ballroom.

In a Victorian England that almost existed, a steampunk London where tinkerers and clockwork devices exist alongside hansom cabs and corsets, murder is still solved by traditional observation and intuition. This is the London where American typist Cassandra Pengear finds herself stumbling over corpses and helping Scotland Yard detectives solve murders (although they inexplicably prefer to call it interfering). Follow her adventures in the Cassie Pengear Mystery series, beginning with The Killing at the Carnival.