In my four decades as an author, from First Blood through The Brotherhood of the Rose and Creepers, I’ve always tried to find new ways to write action and suspense. Readers know that I do my best to surprise them and take them to places they’ve never been.

My latest novel Murder as a Fine Art attempts to make you believe that you’re in 1854 London. It’s a blend of fact with fiction in a harrowing exhumation of the infamous Ratcliffe Highway murders, a series of mass killings that rivaled those of Jack the Ripper for terrorizing London and all of England.

My main character also blends fiction and fact. Thomas De Quincey was one of the most fascinating personalities of Victorian England. He was obsessed about the Ratcliffe Highway killings and wrote about them vividly in his classic essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.”

De Quincey invented the term “subconscious” and anticipated Freud by a half century.  He was the first person to write about drug addiction in his infamous Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He inspired Edgar Allan Poe, who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes.

This forerunner of the greatest detective will lead you into the streets, slums, mansions, and prisons of gaslit London. As a literary luminary battles a brilliant murderer, their lives are linked by secrets long buried but never forgotten.

Publishers Weekly gave Murder as a Fine Art a rare starred and boxed review: “Brilliant . . . an epitome of the intelligent page turner.”

Booklist also gave it a starred review, calling it an “exceptional historical mystery . . . riveting [with] page-flipping action, taut atmosphere, and multifaceted characters.”

To see the really cool trailer, click here.

To see the list of cities that I’ll be visiting, click here.

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