In 2017, H.B. Lyle introduced the world to Wiggins, an ex-soldier with a talent for deduction perhaps second only to Sherlock Holmes, who in fact trained Wiggins — a once regular on Baker Street in his debut novel, The Irregular.
Though he’s long lived by a code of not doing “official,” things changed for Wiggins after his best friend is killed by Russian anarchists, prompting him to accept an offer and become a secret agent. Tasked with finding out who killed his friend, Wiggins sets out for revenge and instead uncovers a deadly international conspiracy.
Now, Captain Vernon Kell needs Wiggins’ help again in The Red Ribbon, an all-new thriller from Lyle, due out this November. See the cover art and plot details below.
In 1910 London, Captain Vernon Kell’s fledgling secret intelligence service faces being shut down before it has even begun its job of saving the British Empire from German and Russian spies.
Harassed by politicians like the ambitious Winston Churchill, bullied by Special Branch, undermined by his colleague’s ill-advised foreign ventures, and alarmed at his wife’s involvement with militant suffragettes, Kell is making no progress in tracking high-profile leaks from the government. To make matters worse, his best (and only) agent, Wiggins, would rather be working cases of his own.
Wiggins grew up on the streets of London, one of the urchins trained in surveillance by Sherlock Holmes and known as the Baker Street Irregulars. He has promised to avenge the death of his best friend and to track down a missing girl from the East End.
But when his search takes him to an embassy in Belgravia–an embassy that’s actually a high-class brothel presided over by the fearsome “Big T,” one of his fellow Irregulars–Wiggins is drawn into a conspiracy that will test both his personal and professional resolve.
Though just recently announced, The Red Ribbon is scheduled to come out on November 6th and is currently available for pre-order here or anywhere else books are sold.
Praised as “one of today’s finest book reviewers” by New York Times bestselling author Gayle Lynds, Ryan Steck (“The Godfather of the thriller genre” — Ben Coes) has “quickly established himself as the authority on mysteries and thrillers” (Author A.J. Tata). He currently lives in Southwest Michigan with his wife and their six children.