On this special Thursday episode, V chats with Neil Root about his non-fiction book "The Cleveland Street Scandal: How the Victorian Establishment was Almost Brought to its Knees"

It is the summer of 1889, and the royal family is in crisis. It is well known in polite society, in the drawing rooms of the great and the good, that the Prince of Wales's eldest son and his aristocratic acolytes are regulars at a male brothel at 19 Cleveland Street in the heart of London's West End.

Rumors in coffee shops and clubs of princely peccadilloes is common currency. An open secret. Bad behavior by the gentry is expected and accepted, but it must remain an open secret. It must stay behind closed doors. The ruling classes can do what they will, but the rule that rules all is silence. The Establishment has always closed ranks when things got out of hand. A word here and there from powerful people always put rumors swiftly to bed. But this time it is different. The police are not playing ball.

Over the previous decades, the age-old tenets of Victorian social order were being eroded. The feeling that male homosexuality was an aristocratic vice that corrupted lower-class youths was growing. The press joined this popularist bandwagon, presenting rent boys as victims of the predatory upper class. Onto this stage walks Detective Inspector Frederick Abberline of Scotland Yard, fresh from leading the debacle of the Jack the Ripper investigation the previous year. This is to be his last case before he retires. His last chance to salvage his career after the humiliation of the Whitechapel murders.

Testimonies are taken from Lord Arthur Somerset, an equerry to the Prince of Wales and patron of the Cleveland Street club, and from the rent boys themselves. The fact that people are talking is unheard of. The indignation is picked up in parliament by Liberal MP, the writer, publisher and theatre owner Henry Labouchère, who is outraged. '19 Cleveland Street.' he said, 'is no obscure thoroughfare. It is nearly opposite the Middlesex Hospital.' As the cigars are lit and port passed in White's, Pratt's, Boodle's and the Carlton Club, nervousness is turning to fear. The reputations of men who rule half the world are under threat from a scandal that stretches all the way to the corridors of Buckingham Palace.

This Sunday, V chats with Kit Kane about his Death In One Take (Cliffhanger Clara Book 1).

A GLAMOROUS DETECTIVE.

A KILLER ON THE BACKLOT.

LIGHTS, CAMERA… MURDER!

It’s 1923. Jazz is hot, movies are silent, and for Clara Cupar, the UK film industry’s most sought-after, indeed only female stunt performer, business is booming.

Her jaw-dropping work on The Adventures of Annabelle—the year’s most thrilling cliffhanger movie serial—has kept audiences agog the world over and made Clara a seriously rich independent woman.

But when a real-life murder on set brings film-making to a halt, and the finger of suspicion points at Clara herself, can even her considerable smarts and boundless daring uncover the real murderer before the hangman’s noose descends upon Clara’s own lily-white neck?

Set amidst the razzle-dazzle of the early movie business, Kit Kane's CLIFFHANGER CLARA adventures pit their dauntless, one-of-a-kind heroine against a ghastly succession of black-hearted murderers, scheming blackmailers, and nefarious crime lords. All in a brand-new British cozy murder mystery book series where sex, violence, and coarse language get the hook, while thrills, spills, and intrigue take centre stage.

On this special Thursday episode, V chats with Paula B. Mays about her "Murder in La Plaza De Toros: A Marco in Spain Mystery".

Marco never dreamed that going to see the making of a music video would lead to an expansive investigation into the sudden death of a world-famous singer, Kijamba.

Marco is teamed with Detective Alberto Flores of the Malaga police force in picturesque Southern Spain. Their fraught alliance could be the undoing of both their careers as the search for Kijamba's killer leads them to a web of corruption that extends beyond music.

Murder in La Plaza de Toros takes you on an odyssey that combines mystery, culture, and foreign travel in a tale of intrigue.