Pip Property is no stranger to disaster. Typically, they’ve got a plan, but now Dallyangle’s favourite dandy & part-time criminal is locked in the morgue of the crime-fighting Division gone rogue, accused of far more crimes than they’ve actually committed, with (at least) two bucolic burglars out to strangle them with their own cravat. Their lover – the semi-feral Welsh heiress Rosamond Nettleblack – has disappeared into dangerous hands. Enlisting the Division to save Rosamond might be Pip’s only hope, but the cravat designer and the chaotic vigilantes have never seen eye to eye. The Division is looking to prove themselves to a potential new patron – and trusting schemers like Pip is a risk the detectives don’t want to take.

Armed only with a borrowed notebook, threadbare charm, suits without cravat pins, and a swordstick everyone keeps confiscating, Pip must get the Division on-side, convince them that faith is a thing they can still have, and unravel the truth behind Rosamond’s disappearance before it’s too late.

Nat Reeve is a novelist, and a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing. Nat has a PhD in Victorian Studies from Royal Holloway, and their debut novel Nettleblack was published by Cipher Press in 2022. Nettleblack follows a gang of queer misfit Victorian detectives causing chaos in a small country town, and its upcoming sequel, Earlyfate, follows a dandyish nonbinary cravat designer ruining said detectives’ week in every way possible.