When London hansom cab driver Henry Gough is forced to cross the line of Victorian respectability in order to feed his family, he is drawn towards city districts awash with vice and crime. Stumbling upon a clandestine plot that will imperil his country, he turns informer and embarks on a dramatic adventure beset with danger.

Frank Hurst transports us effortlessly and in some style from the dimly-lit streets of nineteenth-century London to the dusty plains of the Indian Raj and the grand estates of Tsarist Russia, where foreign forces seek to challenge British imperial ambitions in the Orient.

Brimming with political intrigue, riddles, romance, violence and deception, this is an epic story, with more than a grain of truth at its core…