Victorian enquiry agent Cyrus Barker and his young assistant Thomas Llewelyn, first introduced in Will Thomas's critically acclaimed debut novel Some Danger Involved, are back with a new mission in To Kingdom Come.

When a bomb destroys the Special Irish Branch of Scotland Yard, all fingers point to the increasingly brazen factions of Irish dissidents seeking liberation from English rule. Volunteering their services to the British government, Barker and Llewelyn set out to infiltrate a secret cell of the Irish Republican Brotherhood known as the Invisibles. Posing as a reclusive German bomb maker and his anarchist apprentice, they are recruited for the group's ultimate plan: to bring London to its knees and end the monarchy forever.

Their adventures take them from an abandoned lighthouse on the craggy coast of Wales to the City of Light, where Llewelyn goes undercover with Maire O'Casey, the alluring sister of an Irish radical. Llewelyn again finds himself put to the test by his enigmatic employer as he is schooled in the deadly science of bomb making.

Fraught with explosives, secret initiations, and vicious stick fights, and featuring historical figures such as Charles Parnell and W. B. Yeats, To Kingdom Come is a riveting sequel to Some Danger Involved.

When a bomb destroys the Special Irish Branch section of Scotland Yard, all fingers point to the burgeoning, increasingly brazen factions of Irish dissenters. A detective and his apprentice set out to determine which secret organization is responsible.

"Watching Llewelyn acquire expertise in the arcane specialties of stick-fighting and hand-made explosives was absorbing, and I was equally fascinated by the meticulous attention the duo pay to assuming their new identities. The descriptions of the settings, ranging from cosmopolitan London and Liverpool to the desolate Welsh countryside, are masterfully drawn, and the lead characters and their comrades are burgeoning delightfully. This modern take on the Victorian era is utterly believable even when the characters are slightly too skilled to be true, and the running humor (the killer Pekinese, and the surly Chinese chef, for examples) adds colorful and delectable garnishes to this tasty main course."

-- I Love a Mystery