Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner
By Amy Myers
A chimney sweep in Victorian London’s poverty-stricken East End, Tom Wasp is highly flattered to be asked to model for Valentine Drake, a painter in fashionable Chelsea, especially since his co-model is the beautiful and warm-hearted Bessie Barton, a red-headed stunner who becomes his friend.
Grief-stricken when her body is found by mudlarks on the muddy banks of the river Thames, Tom vows to find her murderer. Tracking her pitiful past through London’s seamiest quarters, he discovers the monstrous shadow that hangs over her life, Moonman, from whose clutches Bessie had fled, only to fall into his murderous hands at last. But who is Moonman? Is he one of the Angels, the high-minded group of artists to which Valentine belongs? Or is the truth more terrifying still?
Step by step Tom hunts down his quarry through the darkness, guided by his faith that there is goodness in this world as well as evil, and assisted by his chummy, the eleven-year-old Ned.
Narrated by Tom himself, this unusual historical thriller whirls the reader from the squalor of London’s Victorian slums to the heady pleasures of its high-life, revealing both the evil and the goodness in both. Tom and Ned make a formidable team as they clean the filthy chimneys of life.
Amy Myers, M.D., is a specialist in autoimmune diseases whose career was set in motion by her own experience dealing with autoimmune issues. Myers graduated cum laude from the Honors College at the University of South Carolina and earned her medical degree at Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center. After completing her residency in emergency medicine at the University of Maryland, she founded the nationally renowned functional medicine center Austin UltraHealth, where she currently serves as its medical director.
