The Cast-Off Coat Conspiracy

De: Richard Fleischman

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

Stolen greatcoats, a forged revolution, and a valet racing to stop treason tailored in wool.

A dead man in the Thames is wearing the Earl of Winhaven's greatcoat. In the secret pocket: a list of Cabinet ministers marked for assassination.

By morning, Julian Vane is under house arrest, his wardrobe is evidence, and London has decided that his cast-off coats are the uniform of a revolution.

Thorne disagrees. Someone has been buying up the Earl's discarded wool, altering the linings, and dressing a hired actor as a People's Earl to incite the mob in his master's name. The trail runs from a Seven Dials print shop to a tailor's cellar reeking of coal-tar ink—and back to a former Winhaven footman with a very long memory and last year's buttons.

To clear his master's name before Parliament opens, Thorne must outdress a street impostor, follow the coal tar to its source, and prove that the only thing Winhaven ever contributed to treason was an unfashionable coat.

The Cast-Off Coat Conspiracy—in which an exacting valet discovers that a borrowed silhouette can bring down a government and that the difference between a revolution and a farce is, ultimately, a matter of buttons.