Murder on Threadneedle Street (A Wrexford & Sloane Mystery) by Andrea Penrose Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery, regency mystery
Series: Wrexford & Sloane #10
Pages: 368
Published by Kensington on September 29, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Not all that glitters in Regency London is quite what it seems, as Charlotte and Lord Wrexford discover when a counterfeiting scheme draws them into a deadly web of murder and manipulation in USA Today bestselling author Andrea Penrose’s masterfully plotted mystery for readers of Victoria Thompson, C.S. Harris, and Deanna Raybourn.
Lord Wrexford and Charlotte’s growing family ensures that life is a source of constant adventure. The addition of Wrexford’s half-sister to their household is proving an unexpected delight. But some surprises are less welcome—and trouble strikes when Hawk, one of the young boys in their care, arrives home distraught after learning that his new drawing teacher has been found murdered on Threadneedle Street.
Fletcher Campbell’s death could be dismissed as a random robbery turned violent. But as an artist herself, Charlotte suspects there’s more to the case than meets the eye. Closer examination reveals that a distinctive ring was taken from the victim’s finger. With Hawk pleading for the family to help solve the crime, Charlotte and Wrexford suddenly find themselves entangled in a fiendish mystery that harkens back to a decade-old scandal that nearly brought down the government.
It seems Campbell’s brother was the infamous leader of a counterfeiting gang that swindled the Bank of England. Most were apprehended, but forged banknotes remain a problem. Now, the Bank of England has offered £20,000 to anyone who can use the newly-invented engineering technologies to create the Inimitable Banknote—a complex design that cannot be counterfeited.
It’s a prize that could tempt anyone, and Wrexford and Sloane’s investigation turns even more fraught when one of their closest friends falls under suspicion. The deeper they probe, the more treachery comes to light. For when a lie so easily masquerades as truth, danger may be much closer than they think . . .
My Review:
It’s often said that “money is the root of all evil”, but that’s a misquote. The complete biblical verse says that “the love of money is the root of all evil”. Very much on the other hand, there’s an often repeated contemporary (contemporary to our era and not Wrex and Charlotte’s era) that “money is the root of all evil, but every woman needs roots!”
As it turns out, this tenth entry in the Wrexford & Sloane series is set at the crossroads of those two competing uses of the old verse. Even if Wrex and Charlotte are far from aware of it as this story opens.
It begins, as all good mysteries do, with a murder. And as is often the case, a murder that the police of the day – not yet the professionals of Scotland Yard – are unlikely to investigate because it appears to be a very small and common needle amidst the large haystack of crime in the burgeoning metropolis that is London at the glittering heights – and as is usual in this series – in the murky depths, of the Regency.
Fletcher Campbell was an ex-con. He’d served his time for a crime that he didn’t commit, but he’d made peace with himself and his sentence because the crime that he DID commit was a righteous one. He saved his nephew from the gallows because the boy committed a crime that he was too young to understand, and because Fletcher wasn’t able to protect either one of them from his own brother’s criminal machinations.
A brother who seemed to be the leader of a flamboyant and successful band of counterfeiters. The Lisbon Conspiracy, a grand scheme that defrauded the government of thousands of pounds and poured egg over their faces at the same time, was a decade in the past when Fletcher Campbell was murdered. Long enough ago that the young genius who created the counterfeit documents has grown to manhood. Far enough in the rearview for the government to remember the scandal but with a determination to prevent the next attempt at the same idea – because the stakes are now higher.
The rising tide of international commerce has made the concept of a regulated, controlled, counterfeit-proof national currency of paper money an economic necessity. But the practical problems that must be solved are legion, and the Bank of England has sponsored a lucrative contest to create an Inimitable Banknote – one that cannot be counterfeited.
That contest forms the tapestry of this story, with the death of Fletcher Campbell the first thread to pull in unweaving someone’s plans to win the contract. Either for the £20,000 prize itself or for enough inside information to pull off the kind of counterfeiting opportunity that will make the perpetrators of the original Lisbon Conspiracy look like they weren’t even trying. Unless they are trying again.
But this time around, Wrex and Charlotte are standing in their way. Even if, at the beginning they don’t yet know precisely what they are standing in the way of. Because someone has attacked their family – and that’s one threat that neither of them can let stand.
Escape Rating A: This is what happens when I catch up to one of my comfort reads series. When I first discovered the Wrexford & Sloane series with Murder on Black Swan Lane, I was looking for a readalike for the Sebastian St. Cyr series, which I had just caught up with. It took three years to catch up with Wrexford & Sloane, and now I’m stuck waiting a year between books. But the series is definitely worth it if you love historical mystery.
While set in the same time period as the St. Cyr series, Wrexford & Sloane find their cases not among the high and mighty, but rather in the rising ferment of the Industrial Revolution and the explosion of tension and technological innovation that fueled it. Still, if you like St. Cyr you’ll love Wrexford & Sloane and vice versa.
In this particular story, the plot is incredibly convoluted, AND gets deep into the intersection between art, technology and economics in a complex pattern that makes both the crime and the perpetrators just that much more difficult to discover.
What fascinates me about this series in general is that the problem, as always, is a real one. International commerce was rising in volume rapidly during the Regency, which made the practical issues of exchanging goods and services for monetary value in some method more practical than ships filled with gold bullion an absolute necessity. But gold has intrinsic worth of its own, where paper money is only worth what its backers (usually a government) say it is worth which only has meaning if one trusts the backers. Which isn’t always wise. Counterfeiting was a very real problem – as it still is.
So, while the Lisbon Conspiracy in the background of this story is fictional, the Inimitable Note Competition contest was quite real – as were (and are) all of the problems of technology and perception that made the problem so difficult to solve.
The murder investigation that gets wrapped up and around the technical details is made that much more complicated because the perpetrators use the contest and the technological inventions (and occasional failures) to hide their actions while each part of the problem draws attention from the other and throws up an entire school of herrings.
It’s a case of wheels within wheels – sometimes including literal wheels – plots within plots and frames within frames. It’s all a devilish tangle that keeps the reader – and the protagonists – with their nails biting into their palms until the very end.
I was thrilled to be caught up in the chase with them, and at the end almost couldn’t turn the pages fast enough to be certain that everyone survived mostly intact. So now I’m breathless with anticipation for the next book in the series – and grateful that the author claims in the afterword of THIS book that she’s already begun THAT one.
