The Hellfire Papers - A Tim Lacy Artworld Mystery (Paperback)

When the Master of St Mary's House, Cambridge, hires Tim Lacy to fetch from Australia a collection of eighteenth-century documents willed to it by a wealthy past member of the college, he is economical with the truth. He omits to mention that these manuscripts have a possible connection with the 'suicide' of the late Dean of St Mary's, or that there are interested parties determined to ensure they are never safely lodged in the College library. Supposedly penned by a scandal-mongering member of the notorious Hellfire Club, these papers, if genuine, could be of enormous historical significance and monetary value. Is that why there are two attempts to steal them while they are in Tim's possession? Is that why an academic friend assessing the material is murdered? Failing to convince the police of a connection between these occurrences, Lacy decides to play things his own way. Studying carefully the 200-year-old documents and his dead friend's recent activities, he discovers that the baneful influence of the Hellfire Club has repercussions into the twentieth century and that prominent members of the contemporary establishment have very good reasons for trying to silence him. Interwoven with this unfolding mystery are the extracts from the "Hellfire Papers" themselves, which hold the clues to a devilishly cunning concoction of revenge.