The detective in question is Sandor Seymour, reared by immigrant parents in London's working-class East End and now a multilingual officer with Special Branch. Dispatched to Trieste at the request of the British Foreign Office, it is Seymour's task--operating under the guise of an itinerant King's Messenger--to determine whether the eccentric Lomax left his post voluntarily, or was removed violently. Discovery of the consul's corpse, beaten and dumped into the sea, settles that question, but leaves others tantalizingly unanswered: Why had Lomax been roaming the docks on the night of his demise? With whom had he visited the cinema earlier that evening? Is his perishing somehow related to his falling out with an influential Serbian businessman? And why is Seymour suddenly being followed? Aided by a gruff Austrian inspector and a gaggle of bohemian artists, and pleasantly distracted by Lomax's model friend, Maddalena, Seymour must deal with revolutionaries, farcical "futurists," and his own family's political past as he tries to solve the consul's killing and prevent Trieste from becoming the fuse that ignites a world war.

British author Pearce, best recognized for his series featuring Gareth Owen, the Mamur Zapt in early 20th-century Cairo, Egypt (A Cold Touch of Ice, The Face in the Cemetery), brings to A Dead Man in Trieste his usual flair for convoluted plots, humorous characters, and deft crime-solving compromised on occasion by the vexatious demands of diplomacy. Seymour is a charming protagonist, displaced from his London beat to make sense of Trieste and, in sequels to come, resolve misdeeds at other British consulates and embassies across Europe. With the added incentive of seeing Maddalena once more--clothed or not--this series holds great promise, and the potential of introducing Pearce to a broader U.S. audience. --J. Kingston Pierce

"Picking up a new book by Michael Pearce reminds you why people enjoy reading mysteries."-Denver Post

"The steady pace, atmospheric design, and detailed description re-create a complicated city. A recommended historical series."-Library Journal

"Sheer fun."-The Times (London)

"An unfailingly amusing historical series."-Booklist

"Pearce again demonstrates his skill at making the past come alive and at seamlessly weaving actual political intrigues into his plot."-Publishers Weekly

Barcelona, 1912-a city still recovering from the dramatic incidents of the so-called "Tragic Week" when Catalonian conscripts bound for the unpopular war in Spanish Morocco had rebelled at the city's dockside against the royalist forces. In the fighting, many were killed, and afterward, even more imprisoned, including an Englishman, who was later found dead in his cell.

The dead man had been a prominent businessman in Gibraltar, so what was he doing in Barcelona? And how did he really meet his end-murdered, in a prison cell? The case, in Gibraltar's view, cries out for investigation-and by someone independent of the Spanish authorities. So Scotland Yard dispatches Seymour of the Special Branch.

Michael Pearce was raised in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He trained as a Russian interpreter but later moved to an academic career, first as a lecturer in English and the History of Ideas and then as an administrator. Pearce now lives in southwest London and is best known as the author of the award-winning Mamur Zapt books.