Inspector of the Dead

LEGENDARY THRILLER WRITER DAVID MORRELL TRANSPORTS READERS TO THE FOGBOUND STREETS OF LONDON, WHERE A KILLER PLOTS TO ASSASSINATE QUEEN VICTORIA.
The year is 1855. The Crimean War is raging. The incompetence of British commanders causes the fall of the English government. The Empire teeters. Amid this crisis comes opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, one of the most notorious and brilliant personalities of Victorian England. Along with his irrepressible daughter, Emily, and their Scotland Yard companions, Ryan and Becker, De Quincey finds himself confronted by an adversary who threatens the heart of the nation.
This killer targets members of the upper echelons of British society, leaving with each corpse the name of someone who previously attempted to kill Queen Victoria. The evidence indicates that the ultimate victim will be Victoria herself.
"We take strict laws controlling the sale of narcotics so much for granted that it comes as a surprise to learn that opium, from which heroin and morphine are derived, was legally available in the British Empire and the United States for much of the 1800s. Chemists, butchers, grocers, and even paperboys sold it. The liquid form was called laudanum, a mixture of powdered opium and alcohol (usually brandy). Almost every household owned a bottle in the same way that aspirin is common in medicine cabinets today. The only pain remedy available (apart from alcohol), opium was dispensed for headaches, menstrual cramps, upset stomach, hay fever, earaches, back spasms, baby colic, cancer, just about anything that could ail anybody."