"A true story of conspiracy, bloodletting, intrigue, execution and revenge, The Phoenix Park Murders tells the story of the most infamous crime of nineteenth century Ireland when assassins wielding deadly surgical knives killed two men walking in the Phoenix Park on 6 May 1882." "One of the dead is the new chief secretary for Ireland, Lord Frederick Cavendish, a close relative of prime minister William Ewart Gladstone. The other is Thomas Henry Burke, head of the Irish Civil Service, a man denounced by Nationalists as the leading 'Castle Rat' in the British administration." "The government and police must solve this crime. But there are no clues. The witness descriptions are inconclusive and city detectives do not know where to begin. Forensic evidence is non-existent, and they must attempt to penetrate the dangerous Fenian underworld. But even here no one knows anything because the audacious crime has been carried out by an entirely new group, one styling itself the 'Irish Invincibles'."--Jacket.