Three years have passed since the Leman Street locomotive disaster, when DI Edmund Reid is forced to return to Whitechapel to help clear his former associate's name. Once again Reid finds himself, along with DS Drake, plunged into a criminal underworld that threatens to overtake London'e East End on the eve od Queen Victosia's diamond jubilee celebration.

Haunted by the failure to catch London's most evil killer, Jack the Ripper, Inspector Edmund Reid now heads up the notorious H Division, the toughest police district in the East End. Reid and his men find themselves fighting to uphold justice and the rule of law, always fearing the Ripper is coming back for another reign of terror.

Inspector Edmund Reid travels deep into the seedy criminal London underworld hell-bent on taking back the blood-stained streets of Whitechapel. But Reid isn't fighting this battle alone. He's joined by Detective Inspector Bennet Drake, a hard man who prefers to let his fists do the talking, Captain Homer Jackson, a brash American with a voracious appetite for vice, and Long Susan, a madam with shady secrets.