Birthmarks Author:Mark Jenkins As the Crystal Palace looms, shimmering, into the Hyde Park skyline to house the Great Exhibition, the Metropolitan Police face two threats to young Queen Victoria's reign. Peers, bishops and City dignitaries are being blackmailed by former prostitute Lottie Rawsthorne, now an early music-hall star. Meanwhile in typhoid-ridden Soho, German asylu... more »m-seekers plot world revolution. In Birthmarks, the Met recruits its first detective, James Welch, to infiltrate the revolutionaries, who are immersed in fierce rivalries between factions. This darkly humourous tale of covert operations and human folly casts a penetrating light on mid-Victorian London society, and on Karl Marx's neurosis, for which the world paid an exorbitant price.« less