The Iron Duke (Iron Seas # 1)

The Iron Duke is a romance by the American writer Meljean Brook, published in 2010. It is set in an alternate nineteenth century in which England has recently thrown off the rule of the Horde, and it mixes mechanical technologies with political intrigue.

Rhys Trahaearn is the man who led the rebellion, and his reputation has made him both a national hero and a commercial force, since the merchant empire he runs depends on people being afraid of him. Detective Inspector Mina Wentworth is the officer who arrives at his house after a corpse is dropped onto it from an airship, and he treats her as something he intends to acquire.

The investigation does not stay a matter of one death. When Mina establishes who the victim was, she finds a conspiracy that reaches across England and puts everyone in it at risk, and the two of them have to travel through country infested by the walking dead and across dangerous water to follow it. The novel is the first of the Iron Seas books.