Elegantly-told historic crime thriller about a London merchant selling arms to the South who faces a moral dilemma when his daughter, in love with a Yankee, insists he reneges on the deal he has struck.

When he is brutally murdered her lover is suspect, but he has already fled to America, taking the young girl with him. The merchant's widow begs William Monk and his wife Hester to follow her daughter to America and persuade her to come home.

(Headline, £5.99)