A Henrietta and Inspector Howard Novel

Henrietta Von Harmon works as a 26 girl at a corner bar on Chicago's northwest side. It's 1935, but things still aren't looking up since the big crash and her father's subsequent suicide, leaving Henrietta to care for her antagonistic mother and younger siblings. Henrietta is eventually persuaded to take a job as a taxi dancer at a local dance hall - and just when she's beginning to enjoy herself, the floor matron turns up dead. When aloof Inspector Clive Howard appears on the scene, Henrietta agrees to go undercover for him-and is plunged into Chicago's grittier underworld. Meanwhile, she's still busy playing mother hen to her younger siblings, as well as to pesky neighborhood boy Stanley, who believes himself in love with her and keeps popping up in the most unlikely places, determined to keep Henrietta safe - even from the Inspector, if need be. Despite his efforts, however, and his penchant for messing up the Inspector's investigation, the lovely Henrietta and the impenetrable Inspector find themselves drawn to each other in most unsuitable ways.

Newly engaged, Clive and Henrietta now begin the difficult task of meeting each other’s family. “Difficult” because Clive has neglected to tell Henrietta that he is in fact the heir to the Howard estate and fortune, and Henrietta has just discovered that her mother has been hiding secrets about her past as well. When Clive brings Henrietta to the family estate to meet his parents, they are less than enthused about his impoverished intended.

Henrietta and Clive Howard are finally tying the knot—but family tensions and clashing expectations threaten to upend their plans. As the long-awaited day arrives, love is in the air—but so are complications. Elsie's budding romance with Stanley is tested by the arrival of the dashing Lieutenant Harrison Barnes-Smith and Henrietta's vivacious friend Rose—a situation that grows increasingly dark and confused as time goes on.

Their honeymoon abruptly ended by the untimely death of Alcott Howard, Clive and Henrietta return to Highbury, where Clive discovers all is not as it should be. Increasingly convinced that his father’s death was not an accident, Clive launches his own investigation, despite his mother’s belief that he has become “mentally disturbed” with grief.

When a restless Clive begs Sergeant Frank Davis for a case, he and Henrietta are sent to investigate Madame Pavlovsky, a spiritualist holding séances in an abandoned schoolhouse on the edge of town and suspected of robbing her wealthy clients. What seems an open-and-shut matter becomes more complicated when Henrietta begins to believe the woman's strange ramblings. Meanwhile, Elsie turns to her sister and Clive for help. She and her budding love, Gunther, are desperate to find Liesel Klinkhammer, a missing German immigrant and mother of Anna, the little girl in Gunther's care.

Clive and Henrietta Howard's return to Europe takes a dangerous turn when Inspector John Hartle recruits them to find a missing panel from the famous Ghent Altarpiece. Nazi agents are also hunting for this Renaissance treasure, believing it contains a coded map to ancient weapons of unimaginable power. Their search leads to Château du Freudeneck in Alsace, ancestral home of Henrietta's eccentric Von Harmon relatives.

In this seventh book of the series, Clive and Henrietta return to England to find Castle Linley in financial ruin. When Clive’s cousin, Wallace, invites an estate agent in to assess the home’s value, the agent is later found poisoned, throwing all of the Castle’s guests into suspicion. Clive and Henrietta are soon drawn into an investigation, which is slowed by an incompetent local inspector and several unexplained phenomena...the cause of which many, especially the frail Lady Linley, believe to be the workings of the ghost of a hanged maid.

Clive and Henrietta (and baby, Teddy!) return to Highbury to spend Christmas with the family. Clive’s mother, Antonia, schemes to increase her social standing at her club by introducing the pair during the annual Christmas ball as the newly minted Lord and Lady Linley. Her plans go awry, however, when the club’s collection of gifts for the poor mysteriously goes missing. Henrietta and Clive are reluctantly drawn into the case, though Clive suspects it is nothing more than a silly prank.