'Never loses its grip...clever and intricate...Conan Doyle, Dickens and Wilkie Collins knew how to do it, and Taylor has learned his lesson well' Susan Hill, Guardian

A stuffed bear, a pet mouse, fraud and felony on the streets of London, and strange goings-on in the fens... Full of suspense and teeming with life, Kept is a Victorian mystery about the curious things men do to get what they want.

August 1863. Henry Ireland, a failed landowner, dies unexpectely in a riding accident, and his young widow disappears. Three years later his friend James Dixey, a celebrated naturalist, is found dead in his grounds with his throat torn out. Are these deaths connected? What has happened to Mrs Ireland? And what are the sinister bonds that link these men to the poaching of osprey eggs in Scotland, the doomed romance of Dixey's kitchen maid and the first Great Train Robbery?

'Real and fictional events are brilliantly entwined in this tale of mystery and chicanery' Spectator

'Intricate and vividly realized...a triumphant success' Daily Telegraph