The Assassination of the Bankers

The mystery begins with the assassination of five leading British bankers by multiple assassins. All are brutally and professionally carried out: Sir Roger Gilchrest has his throat cut, Rory Candiman is garrotted, James Stewart is decapitated, Stephanie Almiston is shot through the heart, and Billy Jones is blown up. Shortly thereafter, the organizers of these crimes, who call themselves The Committee, make a set of demands involving a significant change in government policies, including in the way finance has been governed or, in their view, misgoverned. If the changes have not begun to be implemented in one month, The Committee threatens further assassinations will take place and will continue until the government complies. Since finance is at the core of the British economy, this threatens the paralysis of economic activity generally, so finding the conspirators and neutralizing them becomes the priority of the state authorities. The immediate response of the government is to declare a state of emergency and mobilize the security arm of the police, known as Special Branch, to head the investigation with the authority to do whatever it takes to bring the assassins and the organizers of the killings to justice. But clues are in short supply, and it is only a single piece of luck that leads to any progress, and then only with regard to one of the actual killers, not The Committee who organized all the killings. Moreover, keeping within established procedures does not promise sustained progress, so increasingly unorthodox means have to be employed for any advance to take place in the investigation. Even then, it is far from certain that success will be assured. Furthermore, the deviation from established practices in the state of emergency creates dissension within the ranks of the investigating detectives. Some of them regard the path of governmental responses as illegitimate and, therefore, being parallel to the crimes they are investigating. Moreover, much of the populace is supportive of the demands made by The Committee rather than the government's response, and this support is widespread across most classes in the nation. Thus, it is far from certain that the government will prevail even if all the perpetrators of the killings are apprehended as both the people and its own investigating arm turn against it. Radical change, perhaps even some form of revolution, portends... Two romances also intertwine with the investigation, so politics, murder, detection, and love intermix in the resolution of the mystery.