For Scotland Yard Inspector Michael Corravan, navigating his job as an inspector who came up in the ranks hasn't been easy. There's the mistrust (though earned) the public have about Scotland Yard and the suspicions and hatred against his Irish community. He is suspected by both those above him for being too close to the Irish community and by the Irish community who thinks he bows too much to his English superiors.

He is put to test when London's worst maritime accident occurs in September 1878 and he finds himself not only in a race to solve a horrifying loss of life, but also to get to the bottom of what becomes a battle of political aims, conspiracy theories lighting up the newspapers, the mysterious appearance of guns in the Irish neighborhoods and the fate of Irish Home Rule on the line.

A one-time professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Odden has long been drawn to the Victorian era-- back to her New York University PhD dissertation. In it, she examined how descriptions of injuries from nineteenth-century railway disasters in popular novels, medical literature, and legal documents helped to create a discourse out of which Freud and other psychologists drew their ideas of “trauma.” Her novels have been widely reviewed and her first novel, A Lady in the Smoke, was a USA Today bestseller and A Dangerous Duet and A Trace of Deceit have won awards for historical mystery and historical fiction.

Livestream: Karen Odden with Doug Moe