Fish, Blood and Bone

Claire Fleetwood, an American forensic photographer, is ardent about love & scientific work--in this she is a characteristic Leslie Forbes heroine. When she inherits a large house & garden in London from relatives she never knew she had, she imagines it will be a slice of the English dream, but after the brutal murder of her best friend, she learns that her inheritance involves more than she wanted or bargained for. Desperate to find a motive for her friend's death, Claire is impelled to join a scientific expedition led by her cousin, Jack Ironstone, who is one of the men she suspects of being responsible for the murder. Her journey leads from Jack the Ripper's claustrophobic Whitechapel to the Fleetwoods' murky past in the Asian opium trade & the wild "paradise" valleys of Tibet. It parallels a route taken a century before during Britain's Great Triangulation of India by Claire's distant relative Magda Ironstone & a mysterious botanist. As Claire reconstructs the triangular love affair she imagines took place then, her own story is overtaken by Magda's--& to deadly effect. This dazzling novel of loss & regeneration weaves together the stories of three extraordinary families in an epic adventure.Forbes, Leslie is the author of 'Fish, Blood and Bone' with ISBN 9780374155063 and ISBN 0374155062.