Receipts of the Dead: An Ada Harrow Mystery—Book One - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

London is issuing receipts for burials—weeks before anyone dies.

When a man is found peacefully suffocated and a violet RECEIVED stamp appears where grief should be, clerk-turned-investigator Ada Harrow begins to audit a city that thinks tidy paperwork excuses dirty air. With her sharp-eyed housekeeper Mercy, skeptical Inspector Murchison, and physician Dr. Silas Merton, Ada follows a trail of “adjustments” and blank labels to the Air & Hearth Society, where charity is measured in Roman numerals and a valve’s quarter-turn can make a gentleman sleep forever.

Every clue tightens the screw: bridges routed in pencil (Blackfriars, Hungerford), a little canister marked No. 12, and ledgers that pair motive with XII as if both belong in the minutes. At the centre stand secretary Mr. Whitcomb, treasurer Eldridge, and trustee Lawrence Shale—men who insist improvement is mercy, even as households learn to fear polite courtesies.

To balance the books, Ada will risk her shop, her freedom, and London’s patience—because someone is stamping the city’s dead RECEIVED, and has kept room for one more name.

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