Synopses & Reviews
The William Monk series begins with The Face of a Stranger, which we first published in hardcover in 1990. The Face of a Stranger takes place in 1856 just after the end of the Crimean War. Monk is a London police detective but he has to be told that because he is suffering from amnesia brought on by a coach accident. He has so far in the series not regained his memory except for flashes now and again, prompted by events and sometimes faces. He is obliged to learn about himself using his considerable detecting skills. Often he is troubled and ashamed by what he discovers...In The Face of a Stranger he meets Hester Latterly, an extraordinary and opinionated young woman who has returned from nursing with Florence Nightingale in the Crimea and wants to reform London hospitals. Monk finds her admirable but thinks he desires a gentler, more conventional woman. After a quarrel with his superior, Monk is dismissed from the police and sets up as a private investigator. His relationship with Hester, becomes central to both their lives as they work together on cases that tend to involve medicine, the army and the law. Most of them include a trial in the Victorian courtroom, the cases fought by the brilliant barrister, Oliver Rathbone, who makes the relationship a triangle for a time, but at the end of A Breach of Promise Monk and Hester declare their love and as the next novel opens they are newlyweds.