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The new novel by the author of the acclaimed The Convictions of John Delahunt - a cunningly plotted, beautifully written historical crime fiction to stand alongside the novels of John Banville, Andrew Taylor and Kate Mosse.

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´Just brilliant.´ DONAL RYAN ´An exceptionally good book.´ C. J. SANSOM

1816 was the year without a summer. A rare climatic event has brought frost to July, and a lingering fog casts a pall over a Dublin stirred by zealotry and civil unrest, torn between evangelical and rationalist dogma.

Amid the disquiet, a young nursemaid in a pious household conceals a pregnancy and then murders her newborn. Rumours swirl about the identity of the child´s father, but before an inquest can be held, the maid is found dead. When Abigail Lawless, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Dublin´s coroner, by chance discovers a message from the maid´s seducer, she is drawn into a world of hidden meanings and deceit.

An only child, Abigail has been raised amid the books and instruments of her father´s grim profession. Pushing against the restrictions society places on a girl her age, she pursues an increasingly dangerous investigation. As she leads us through dissection rooms and dead houses, Gothic churches and elegant ballrooms, a sinister figure watches from the shadows - an individual she believes has already killed twice, and is waiting to kill again...

Determined, resourceful and intuitive, Abigail Lawless emerges as a memorable young sleuth operating at the dawn of forensic science.

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"What a story he tells and what a voice he uses to tell it: Abigail Lawless is a joy. This is the kind of writing that pushes you gently into a different world then holds you there until the last sentence. Just brilliant." DONAL RYAN 20161130

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Born in Co. Wexford, ANDREW HUGHES was educated at Trinity College, Dublin. A qualified archivist, he worked for RTE before going freelance. It was while researching his acclaimed social history of Fitzwilliam Square - Lives Less Ordinary: Dublin´s Fitzwilliam Square, 1798-1922 - that he first came across the true story of John Delahunt that inspired his debut novel, The Convictions of John Delahunt .

Andrew Hughes lives in Dublin.

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