A Gentleman's Guide To Murder: Manners. Mystery. Murder.

Book One in the Julian Blackwood Series Manners are rules. Etiquette is a weapon. And someone has just invited Julian Blackwood back into the game. Julian Blackwood has spent years perfecting the art of retirement. A former MI6 operative living quietly in Mayfair, he prefers bespoke tailoring, vintage Burgundy, impeccable table manners-and keeping his former profession firmly in the past. But Julian has never lost the habits that once kept him alive. He notices the misplaced fork. The incorrectly tied knot. The waiter whose shoes do not match his occupation. The tiny breaches of etiquette that reveal when someone is pretending to be something they are not. Then a powerful industrialist dies during an exclusive London dinner. The police see a suspicious death. >A silver dessert fork has been positioned according to an intelligence code known to almost no one-and associated with Arthur Pendelton, Julian's legendary former mentor, a man who has been dead for ten years. What begins as a murder investigation becomes an elaborate game stretching from Mayfair restaurants and Savile Row fitting rooms to private clubs, intelligence archives, grand estates and the canals of Venice. Someone is planting clues specifically for Julian, and every clue seems designed to test not only what he knows, but how he thinks. Then another victim dies. Evidence begins pointing toward Julian himself. And the impossible becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss. Someone knows Pendelton's codes. Someone knows Julian's past. Someone knows exactly which inconsistencies Julian will notice-and which conclusions those inconsistencies will lead him toward. As Julian follows the trail, he discovers something far more dangerous than a conventional murderer: a hidden architecture of manufactured identities, inherited permissions and forgotten intelligence operations capable of making falsehoods appear legitimate simply because enough trusted systems agree they are true. But the most dangerous deception may be much more personal. >It was designed to bring him back. And somewhere behind it all waits a question Julian may not be willing to answer: What if the most dangerous man in the room is the man who taught you how to recognize danger? A Gentleman's Guide to Murder is the first novel in the Julian Blackwood series, a sophisticated mystery-thriller blending murder, espionage, psychological deception, old intelligence secrets and distinctly British wit. Perfect for readers who enjoy intelligent mysteries, gentleman spies, intricate conspiracies, elegant settings, buried Cold War secrets and protagonists who are as comfortable discussing a Windsor knot or a Burgundy vintage as they are dismantling a lie. Some invitations are not requests. They are tests.