Dead Image

Dead Image, Hale, 2000
The first Best mystery

Large Print, Ulverscroft, 2001
Audio Book, Soundings, 2001

Order from Amazon UK
Order audio book Amazon UK

The explosion was heard twenty miles away. It killed canal boatmen and wrecked the exotic Pompeian villa of Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the fashionable St John's Wood artist. But what caused the 1874 Regent's Park Explosion? Fenian bombs or sabotage by rival railways?
Whose was the other body found in the canal? Was she an unofficial canalboat passenger? An artist's model? The missing King's Cross barmaid? Or yet another victim of the Thames murderer?
The volatile Sergeant Ernest Best of Scotland Yard finds himself straddling the fascinating worlds of art, wealth and privilege - contrasting with that of the poverty stricken boatmen, as he struggles to find the answers.

'Joan Lock's Dead Image finds new material among the teeming Holmesian possibilities of late-Victorian London ...moves easily between rough-and-ready canal folk and the fashionable London artistic community....a solidly researched crime novel.'The Times

'Dead Accurate'Waterways World

'. . . it is the fascinating background of the canal and narrow boat society that makes this book stand out from the crowd . . . a novel I recommend without reservation.'Sherlock Holmes Magazine

Dead Image large print edition

Dead Image audio edition