The Agency

When Mary Quinn is ordered to work undercover after a petty thief steals from Buckingham Palace, she receives attention from a prince, wonders at a murder suspect's shared name with her father, and struggles with her feelings for James Easton.

Hesitating to accept James' marriage proposal out of fear of losing her independence, Mary watches over a dying prisoner whose wife holds a grudge against James, at the same time a familiar Chinese prizefighter arrives in London.

As a nearly full-fledged member of the Agency, the all-female detective unit based in Miss Scrimshaw's Academy for Girls, Mary Quinn, disguised as a poor apprentice builder, must brave the sinister underworld of Victorian London in order to unmask a murderer.

Rescued from the gallows in 1850s London, young orphan and thief Mary Quinn is offered a place at Miss Scrimshaw's Academy for Girls where she is trained to be part of an all-female investigative unit called The Agency and, at age seventeen, she infiltrates a rich merchant's home in hopes of tracing his missing cargo ships.

When Mary Quinn is ordered to work undercover after a petty thief steals from Buckingham Palace, she receives attention from a prince, wonders at a murder suspect's shared name with her father, and struggles with her feelings for James Easton.