Immaculate officers and rough-bearded riflemen, evangelists, card-sharps and dandies face death at attention on the sloping deck of the Birkenhead. But who was the coward hidden among the women in the lifeboat, and who was the girl who lived to report his shame? Eight years later in the summer of 1860, the coward's legacy unfolds, and Verity must piece together a mystery that leads him to uncover an ingenious plot: a madman's revenge for the loss of the Birkenhead. And with this knowledge, only Verity can avert a tragedy unparalleled in English history since the loss of Prince William in the White Ship 700 years before.

In his sixth adventure, Sergeant Verity returns to London's 1860s underworld of alleys and brothels, peopled with sneak thieves, dancing girls, thugs, murderers and pimps. From Newgate Gaol come sinister rumours of a man to be hanged for a murder he did not commit. 'Handsome' Jack Rann, safebreaker extraordinary, has been snared by the rival Swell Mob, and a corrupt policeman, 'Flash' Charley Fowler. To reach America and be lost for ever, Jack must escape the death-cell and pull off the robbery planned by his dead accomplice, Pandy Quinn. From Newgate prison to the stage of the Penny Gaff, from bank vaults under Cornhill to rotting sewers below Wapping and Shadwell, Rann flees - while Sergeant Verity closes on the forces of evil with awesome tenacity.

William Clarence Verity is a sergeant in Scotland Yard's 'Private Clothes Detail'. His beat is the underworld of Victorian London - as seething maze of alleys and bordellos, peopled with sneak thieves, thugs, murderers and their doxies. From far-off Bengal there comes to Verity a tantalising hint of major crime in the making. Despite his superiors' instructions, Verity determines to run the plotters down. And there begins a battle between Verity's sturdy resolve and the devilish cunning of his unseen adversary: Lieutenant Verney Dacre, retired officer of cavalry, woman-beater and gentleman cracksman. The stakes are Verity's career - indeed his freedom - and half a ton of bullion.

Sergeant Verity's second adventure sees him sweltering under the Indian sun, as mutiny brings pillage and war to Bengal. Attached to the Intelligence Department in Calcutta, Verity is given the task of tracing English women who have fallen into the hands of the mutineers, and who face death - or an even worse fate in the harem. But this task is supplanted by a yet more desperate quest when the Kaiser-i-Hind, the great diamond which symbolises sovereignty over all India, disappears, as if by magic, from beneath Verity's eyes as it is about to be handed over to the British.

Sergeant Verity's adversaries in the underworld are as busy as ever, this time taking advantage of the Brighton Races to dupe the populace, and, more seriously, to steal the beautiful Shah Jehan clasp. Everyone knows that the glistening jewel is priceless, but only the likes of Sealskin Kite and Old Mole know its true worth. Down from Paddington Green with his family and his old accomplice Miss Jolly, Verity thinks he has crime at bay in Brighton. But the easy time he had anticipated soon turns into a nightmare of false alarms, public disgrace and, worst of all, personal disaster.

William Clarence Verity, Sergeant in 'A' Division of the Metropolitan Police, has seen most of the horrors of the nineteenth century, from the stews of Seven Dials to the prisons of the maharajahs. Now he is sent to the United States, to a nation on the brink of civil war, to guard two of his country's most precious possessions: her good name, and the heir to the throne. Both are threatened by Verney Dacre, thought to have died in the aftermath of the Great Train Robbery of 1857, but planning a coup to crown his career of evil: the robbery of the US mint in Philadelphia.