At the outset of the 20th century, Denton—a Civil War veteran and former Western lawman—moves to London to reinvent himself as a writer. Denton has a passion for justice and for women in distress, and in this series, both get him into plenty of tight scrapes as he tries to help those in need.

With the Boer War raging, England's air is crackling with political intrigue. Meanwhile, the armies of Antisemitism are on the march, even as the call to Zionism echoes through London's East End. Denton, the famous expat author, prefers to keep the conflict at arm's length, but when the woman next door is murdered, he sticks his pointy American nose into England's business, and he keeps it there, even as the price for asking questions gets perilously high.