Praise for the Dead Man series: “Picking up a new book by Michael Pearce reminds you why people enjoy reading mysteries.”— Denver Post “The steady pace, atmospheric design, and detailed description re-create a complicated city. A recommended historical series.”— Library Journal “Sheer fun.”— The Times (London) “An unfailingly amusing historical series.”— Booklist “Pearce again demonstrates his skill at making the past come alive and at seamlessly weaving actual political intrigues into his plot.”— Publishers Weekly Barcelona, 1912—a city still recovering from the dramatic incidents of the so-called “Tragic Week” when Catalonian conscripts bound for the unpopular war in Spanish Morocco had rebelled at the city’s dockside against the royalist forces. In the fighting, many were killed, and afterward, even more imprisoned, including an Englishman, who was later found dead in his cell. The dead man had been a prominent businessman in Gibraltar, so what was he doing in Barcelona? And how did he really meet his end—murdered, in a prison cell? The case, in Gibraltar’s view, cries out for investigation—and by someone independent of the Spanish authorities. So Scotland Yard dispatches Seymour of the Special Branch. Michael Pearce was raised in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. He trained as a Russian interpreter but later moved to an academic career, first as a lecturer in English and the History of Ideas and then as an administrator. Pearce now lives in southwest London and is best known as the author of the award-winning Mamur Zapt books.