It was a simple choice: The stranger or the hangman. On the eve of "Dr." William Johnson's execution, a rough, mysterious man comes to Newgate Prison demanding his release. The stranger calls himself Detective Coombs. He claims Johnson is his assistant and helped him solve a murder case. Even though they've never met, Johnson chooses the lie over the rope. Egged on by the voice of his long-dead twin brother, Johnson throws his lot in with Coombs, a man who sees solutions to murders that no one else can - solutions that fly in the face of observed reality but turn out to be true. During an investigation at a vicarage deep in the moors, a confrontation goes violently wrong, leaving Johnson clinging to life and with one final choice, this one offered by the voice that may not be his dead brother after all. "The Shrouded Gentleman" is a murder mystery novel set primarily in Victorian England in 1884, filled with dark humor, bloody murders, demons, autopsies, and supernatural forces.