City Libraries, City of Gold Coast

The red ribbon, H. B. Lyle

eng

no index present

fiction

The red ribbon

H. B. Lyle

Captain Vernon Kell's fledgling secret intelligence service faces being shut down before it has even begun its job of saving the Empire from German and Russian spies. Harassed by politicians, like the ambitious Winston Churchill, bullied by Special Branch, undermined by his colleague Cumming's ill-advised foreign ventures and alarmed at his wife's involvement with militant suffragettes, Kell is making no progress in tracking high-profile leaks from the government. To make matter worse, his only agent, Wiggins, would rather be working on cases of his own. Wiggins grew up on the streets, one of the urchins trained in surveillance by Sherlock Holmes and known as the Baker Street Irregulars. He has promised to avenge the death of his best friend, and to track down a missing girl. But when his search takes him towards a club in Belgravia - a club containing a lot of young women and presided over by the fearsome Big T, one of his former gang-mates - Wiggins is drawn into a conspiracy that will test both his personal and his professional resolve