Who Will Remember

"August 1816. England is in the grip of what will become known as the Year Without a Summer. Facing the twin crises of a harvest-destroying volcanic winter and the economic disruption caused by the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the British monarchy finds itself haunted by the looming threat of bloody riots not seen since the earliest days of the French Revolution. Amidst the turmoil, a dead man is found hanging upside down by one leg in an abandoned chapel, his hands tied behind his back. The pose eerily echoes the image depicted on a tarot card known as Le Pendu, the Hanged Man. The victim--Lord Preston Farnsworth, the younger brother of one of the Regent's boon companions--was a passionate crusader against what he called the forces of darkness--namely criminality, immorality, and sloth"--