Trumpets Sound No More

In 1840, the theatre world in London is shocked by the brutal killing of one of its youngest and most successful entrepreneurs, Mr Samuel Cake, found bludgeoned in his bachelor house with few leads. Inspector Owen Endersby is called upon to apprehend the culprit before Christmas Eve, just six days away. The case soon involves street vendors, downstairs servants, moneylenders and the greatest performers of the London stage. Without the help of fingerprinting, blood analysis, or any other technique of the modern-day detective, Inspector Endersby must root out the villain any way he can-by disguise, break-and-enter, bribery, mail tampering and physical force. London in 1840 is a brutal city. As the investigation moves into the darker realms of human behaviour, Endersby faces instances of child abuse, child labour, madness and sexual deviancy.

Jon Redfern is a graduate student at the University of Toronto. His thesis was on the operas and melodramas of London's great theatres, and the producers of these entertainments, and became the basis for his latest detective novel. Fedfern’s first novel, The Boy Must Die, won the prestigious Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel in Canada for 2002. Redfern teaches English as a professor at Centennial College in Toronto. He has been a free-lance journalist for both the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail, a story editor for the CBC and a children's playwright. Since 1989 his short stories have appeared in numerous literary journals.