Dead Man in S.
2 primary works • 3 total works
Book 2
The Second Secretary of the Embassy in Istanbul has died in decidedly strange circumstances while attempting to swim the Dardanelles Straits, the passage between Europe and Asia, heavily used by warships, liners, and cargo vessels of all kinds. A romantic attempt to repeat the legendary feat of Leander, as the Embassy claims? Or was it an attempt to spy out a possible landing place for a British military expedition, as the Turks are insisting? Whichever, Cunningham has ended up with a bullet in his head. The suspicious circumstances of his death have to be investigated so the Foreign Office sends out an officer of the Special Branch known as Seymour. Istanbul is a fascinating and exotic place in 1908. It is famously the point where East meets West, a matter of some significance as the old Ottoman Empire crumbles and, in the expectation of war, the Great Powers circle for the kill. Very soon Seymour comes to suspect that Cunningham may have been swimming in deeper waters than the Dardanelles.
Book 3
This is the third exciting crime thriller in Michael Pearce's "Dead Man Series". Why is Seymour of Scotland Yard summoned to somewhere so exotic as North Africa? Isn't the death of a Frenchman there something for the local police? Well, yes and no. The local police are answerable to the International Committee, of which the chairman is the British Consul. So naturally the ensuing investigation has to be above board. And so Seymour is bought in as he has had experience of this sort of thing before. And if he fails - well he is expendable, after all.
This title is set in Athens, 1913, the capital of a country on the brink of war. The new Greek prime minister, Venizelos, tired of the Ottoman overlords, has what he calls the Great Idea - a vision of a new Greece which unites all the Greek people scattered around the Mediterranean. Not such a great idea, in the view of other countries, among them Britain, which believes in letting sleeping dogs lie. And cats. Including the one recently poisoned in Athens and which belonged to the exiled former Sultan. Unfortunately, as is the way with the Balkans, rumours start flying around; one being that this was a sighting shot for the ex-Sultan himself. This, in the Balkans, could start a war and so Britain has to sit up and take notice. Something has to be done. Fast. And - please, urge the diplomats - low-key. The lowest key of all is to send out a police officer from Scotland Yard to investigate, and, as it happens, the Foreign Office has a person in mind: Seymour, of the CID, who has had some experience of this sort of thing before...