The Bloodstone Series (Karlsen)

It is the time of Jack the Ripper. The widowed Queen Victoria sits on the throne of England. The whole of London is on edge, wondering when or where Jack will kill next. The Palace, Parliament, and the press are demanding the police do more to find him. In another part of London, rough-around-the-edges war hero Metropolitan Detective Inspector Rudyard Bloodstone has his own serial killer to find. Interdepartmental rivalries, politics, and little evidence to go on hamper the investigation at every turn.

The summer of 1889 was proving to be a strange one for Detective Inspector Rudyard Bloodstone and his partner. They had a sexual pervert loose. The man didn't actually harm women but threatened them at knife point, fondling them, and ultimately stealing their stockings. Far more serious were the murders of influential men, which appeared random other than they were all killed by arsenic poison. Never had he and his partner had cases with so little workable evidence.

It’s 1890. A veteran, Detective Rudyard Bloodstone has fought a brutal battle and witnessed war horrors that haunt his nightmares. Now, one of those horrors has followed him home from Africa. A vicious predator, the Cape cobra, can kill a man in 30 minutes. A suspect using the snake as a weapon in robberies is terrorizing London. When the crimes escalate into murder, a victim’s daughter Honoria Underhill becomes the focus of the killer.