October 1940. The London borough of West Ham is in the grip of yet another night of bombing, and undertaker Francis Hancock is in the grip of yet another night of temporary insanity. A veteran of World War One, Francis is forced by the nightly air raids to relive the trauma of the trenches, and all he can do is try to outrun the
In the year 1780, Harriet Westerman, the willful mistress of a country manor in Sussex, finds a dead man on her grounds with a ring bearing the crest of Thornleigh Hall in his pocket. Not one to be bound by convention or to shy away from adventure, she recruits a reclusive local anatomist named Gabriel Crowther to help her find the murderer, and historical suspense's newest investigative duo is born.