The sensational climax to David Morrell's acclaimed Victorian mystery trilogy. In 1855, the first murder on an English train causes a wave of fear and panic. There is no escape from a killer in a closed train carriage... and yet the killer can vanish into any station and be lost in the crowd.Notorious Opium-Eater Thomas De Quincy and his irrepressible daughter, Emily, are travelling on the train where the murder takes place. As they follow the clues through the fogbound London streets, they find themselves confronting their most ruthless enemy. Inspired by real events, Ruler of the Night transports readers to the darkest shadows of Victorian England, with a thrilling tale of murder, Empire and revenge.
Did you know that . . . a soldier's biggest social blunder is called jack brew - making yourself a cuppa without making one for anyone else? That twitchers have an expression for a bird that can't be identified - LBJ (the letters stand for Little Brown Job)? Or that builders call plastering the ceiling doing Lionel Richie's dancefloor? Susie Dent does.
Ever wondered why football managers all speak the same way, what a cabbie calls the Houses of Parliament, or how ticket inspectors discreetly request back-up? We are surrounded by hundreds of tribes, each speaking their own distinct slanguage of colourful words, jokes and phrases, honed through years of conversations on the battlefield, in A&E, backstage, or at ten-thousand feet in the air.
Susie Dent has spent years interviewing hundreds of professionals, hobbyists and enthusiasts, and the result is an idiosyncratic phrasebook like no other. From the Freemason's handshake to the publican's banter, Dent's Modern Tribes takes us on a whirlwind tour of Britain, decoding its secret languages and, in the process, finds out what really makes us all tick.
