When Dr James Dalcott is shot dead in his cottage it looks very much like an execution. And as DI Wesley Peterson begins piecing together the victim's life, he finds that the well-liked country doctor had been harbouring strange and dramatic family secrets.

Meanwhile archaeologist Neil Watson has discovered a number of skeletons at nearby Tailors Court that bear marks of dissection and might be linked to tales of body-snatching by a rogue physician in the sixteenth century. But when Neil finds the bones of a child buried with a 1930s coin, the investigation takes a sinister turn.

Who were the children evacuated to Tailors Court during World War II? And where are they now? When a link is established between the wartime evacuees and Dr Dalcott's death, Wesley is faced with his most challenging case yet...

Reviews

Ellis's mixture of history-mystery and modern whodunit works very well and the layered plot is rich in clues, suspects and surprises. The Morning Star