It is 1891 and London is still reeling from the horror of the Ripper murders when Inspector Lestrade is sent to the Isle of Wight to investigate a strange corpse walled up in Shanklin Chine. 

But this is only the start of the nightmare – the first in a series of killings so brutal, so bizarre and apparently so random that only a warped genius (and a master of disguise) could be responsible. Even when Lestrade pieces together the extraordinary pattern of the crimes from the extraordinary poems sent after each murder, he is no closer to knowing the identity of the mysterious ‘Agrippa’, the ‘great, long, red-legged scissorman’. It becomes a very personal battle and Lestrade’s desperate race to avert the next death in the sequence takes him all over the country, from London to the Pennines and back. 

Lestrade whirls from ballroom to bar-room, from vicarage to Spiritualist gathering, from the studio of the celebrated Alma-Tadema to 221B Baker Street with spellbinding panache.