Twelve months have passed since the events surrounding the mystery of Hungerford Stairs. The young Charles Dickens (‘Charley’) has gone back to school – but a new adventure is about to unfold.

When the body of a young girl is washed up beside the River Thames at Blackfriars Bridge, policeman Robert Hesketh finds himself faced with a new and daunting puzzle. Needing to delve beneath the surface of an itinerant waxworks show that may be the cover for a devilish plot, he calls once again on the services of Charley – ‘The Inimitable’ – the very smart, young man who helped him smash a raft of criminal conspiracies just the year before.

When Charley’s close neighbour and friend, Mary Ann Mitton, disappears, the need to uncover this latest dark network of crime becomes pressingly urgent – and very personal. While Hesketh suspects that several eminent figures are involved in sponsoring a scheme of organised corruption and child abuse, the evidence is thin. Just two words that keep recurring in odd and apparently unrelated ways: Obadiah Grange.

Can Hesketh’s and Charley’s joint efforts to discover the meaning of Obadiah Grange produce results before the tide of abuse claims its next victim?