murder

THE MEADOWS OF MURDER . . . Between the covers

I confess to being a devoted fan of medieval mysteries. I think it started with The White Company. Though clearly not a crime novel, that book triggered my interest in the period and it’s people. Since then, we have had Ellis Peters, Umberto Eco and Sarah Hawksworth, to name but three. I am new to Paul Doherty’s Brother Athelstan books, but was not disappointed by The Meadows of Murder. We are in late 14th century London, Athelstan is priest of St Erconwald’s church, and on the north bank of the Thames, the bodies of those executed for their role in the recently crushed Peasant’s Revolt are hanging rotting from their gibbets. The prologue explains the complex political situation of the day: the King, Richard II, is little more than a boy; John of Gaunt is locked in conflict with the powerful guildsmen of London, while powerful figures like Richard’s mother Joan, conspire behind the scenes. The country is still struggling from devastating effects of The Black Death.

This is no softly tinted golden account of a fondly imagined medieval England. It is full of dark corners and harsh realities. Members of a London Guild who were guilty of what is best described as a group rape of a Spanish entertainer are being murdered, one by one. A terminally Ill craftsman has sought sanctuary in Athelstan’s church for murdering a Jewish moneylender. London’s streets are dangerous places, violent and foul with sewage. Somehow, Athelstan rides the storm, helped by a mixture of his own resolute faith and the strength of his personality.

Athelstan and his friend Sir John Cranston, the Lord Hugh Coroner of London, are drawn to St Osyth’s Priory on the north bank of the Thames. It was there, that Massimo Servini, the abused Spaniard, was taken to die. The Priory has its own mysteries. Why the previous Abbess and Prioress disappear, one with a quantity of stolen treasure? Why is Thibault, the Queen Mother’s confidante ever present? And is Adam the Anchorite actually the brain damaged fool he appears to be, or is his imbecility a cloak masking something far more sinister?

There are touches of wry humour. Athelstan’s parishioners are certainly a peculiar bunch. He has summoned them to the church.

“He glared and he stared, managing his anger, but also counting heads and remembering faces. Watkin, the Dung collector, his nephew, Michael the Minstrel, Pike the Ditcher, Ranulph, the Rat Ctcher, with his two caged ferrets, Ferox and Audax, the Hangman of Rochester, Crispin, the Carpenter, Jocelyn, the Tavern Master, and all the rest of the motley crew.”

Looming over the narrative is the immense figure of John of Gaunt. The third son of Edward III, denied the crown by primogeniture, he was still an immense political figure. Best remembered today for the memorable speech Shakespeare put into his mouth in Richard II, he nevertheless was – briefly, and by marriage – king of the ancient Spanish kingdom of Castile. His son was crowned Henry IV in 1399. The animosity between him and the London Guilds is a key part of this tale. His name? He was born in the Flemish city of Ghent, now Gand. Paul Doherty (via the perception and acuity of Athelstan) raises the concept of what were called ‘by-blow’ progeny, – children not legitimised by marriage. Men like John of Gaunt could have numerous bastard offspring, and it was seen as nothing more than a testament to their virility, but for women of noble birth it was another matter altogether.

The key to the mystery lies at St Osyth’s, both above and beneath the ground. Athelstan uncovers a fatal network of allegiances and grievances that has caused many deaths. The humble priest’s ability to move effortlessly between Court, Cloister and Commons is rather implausible, but Paul Doherty has given us a compulsive read, full of larger-than-life characters, set against an impeccably researched portrait of mid-14thC London. The Meadows of Murder will be published by Severn House on 6th January.

January 2, 2026 0

DEATH ON SKYE . . . Between the covers

Aline Templeton sets up her stage with admirable directness, and wastes no time introducing us to the characters in her drama. Human Face is (or purports to be) a refugee charity. It has relocated from the south of England to a gloomy Victorian property on Skye and its director, Adam Carnegie is, we soon learn, a wrong ‘un. Beatrice Lacey, a wealthy but emotionally needy supporter of Human Face, had allowed her Surrey home to be used by the charity and is uneasy in its new location, but is in thrall to the messianic Carnegie.

A young woman called Eve is the latest in a series of ‘housekeepers’ at Balnashiel Lodge, and had been promised a British National Insurance number if she behaves herself. Vicky Macdonald, despite marrying a local man, is still regarded as a Sassenach. She does the actual housekeeping at the Lodge.

PC Livvy Murray has been exiled to Skye after being duped by a childhood friend who had been leading a double life in in serious crime. Now, she is stuck in a damp and draughty police house, with her career more or less over before it has started. Kelso Strang is a recently bereaved Edinburgh police officer. He is ex-military, and the son of a Major General. His decision to become a copper has resulted in a huge rift between him and his father.

When Eve is reported missing, Livvy Murray can find nothing suspicious, but refers the matter to her bosses on the mainland. Strang’s boss, seeking to divert him from the trauma of the recent death of his wife in a road accident, sends him up to Skye to investigate.

Aline Templeton has a certain amount of wicked fun at the expense of the unfortunate Beatrice, with her plastic pretend baby, the industrial quantities of chocolate bars she has stashed at strategic points throughout the lodge, and her desperate gullibility. Almost exactly half way through the book, the narrative (which has been ambling along pleasantly enough) explodes into violence, and takes an unexpected turn.

This is the first of a six book series, with an unusual publishing history. All six have appeared between the date of this, 25th August 2025, and the sixth – Death on The Black Isle – on 25th November 2025. Joffe Publishing clearly has a strategy, and I hope it works for them, but is this book any good? Short answer is yes, it’s very readable. The Skye setting is suitably bleak and tempestuous, and the description of the charity scammers rings all too true in a world where ostensibly reputable charities pay obscene amounts of donors’ money to their executives and their TV advertisers.

Were one to summon all the fictional British Detective Inspectors to a convention, the meeting pace would need to be very spacious, and the catering arrangements complex, so does Kelso Strang have sharp enough elbows to make a space for himself? Again, yes. We have come to expect our DIs to be charismatic, damaged and driven, and Strang certainly ticks all three boxes. Death On Skye is available now.

January 1, 2026 0

MYSTERY IN WHITE . . . Between the covers

Largely forgotten now, Joseph Jefferson Farjeon was a dramatist and novelist who died in 1955. His reputation has perhaps been eclipsed by that of his sister Eleanor. Coming at the tail end of The Golden Age, Mystery In White was published in 1937. Another book which begins in the snow, The Nine Tailors, came out three years earlier, but that is where the resemblance ends. Wimsey and Bunter’s misadventure in a snow-filled Fenland ditch moves on quite quickly, and covers a much longer period of time.

Here, the 11.37 train from Euston ends up stationary, the line blocked by snow. In one compartment are a variety hall dancer bound for Manchester, a middle class brother and sister named David and Lydia, a rather gauche clerk called Thomson, an old colonial hand referred to only as ‘the bore’, and an older man, Edward Maltby, who claims to be a psychic researcher. He is heading for Naseby, where he hopes to commune with the spirit of King Charles I. Not that it matters, but examining the route of the old LMS line, we might assume that the action takes place somewhere in Bedfordshire.

The beleaguered train guard can offer little hope of quick deliverance for the stranded passengers, and Maltby takes – literally – a bold step, and jumps down from the carriage, stating he will find his way to the nearest village. The others, after a while and quite implausibly, decide to follow him, and after several misadventures in the drifts, arrive at an isolated house, with an unlocked door. Inside is a puzzle, inside a mystery, inside an enigma. A kettle is merrily boiling away on the stove, as if in anticipation of a brew of tea, but the house is, as far as the group can see, unoccupied.

The escapees from the train are busy dusting themselves down and thawing out, when Edward Maltby arrives, in the company of a rough stranger, who soon leaves. Then, the bore from the train, named Hopkins, also arrives and informs the group that in the next compartment* of the carriage, a man has been found dead.

*Back in the day, railway carriages consisted of a number of separate compartments, designed to seat perhaps seven or eight people. Along the right (or left) side of the carriage ran a corridor, and each compartment had a door which opened into it.

The plot develops at pace. The loutish cockney, Smith, who first arrived with Maltby has left, returned and then left again after provoking a one-sided fight with the bore, who we now now is called Hopkins. Young Thomson was sent to bed with a high temperature, but after alarming dreams, got up in a daze, but has now been brought downstairs. The dancer, Lucie Noyes, had injured her foot in a fall, and was also packed off to bed to rest. She has disturbing thoughts about the bed, however, as it seems to have a certain ‘presence’ which is not altogether pleasant, and she took is now downstairs. Meanwhile Maltby has assumed the role of a kind of Magus, and is making enigmatic statements about the psychic dangers of the building. On a more practical note, a letter was discovered which partly explains the open door and tea being laid. A servant had been looking after the house, and was expecting visitors, but of the retainer and the guests there is no sign.

This changes when David decides to go out into the night and look around. Eventually, he finds a young woman wandering about in the snow. She tells him she is Nora Strange, and that she and her elderly father were trying to drive to Valley House. The car became stuck in a drift. David quickly surmises that they were heading for ‘the house’ itself, and the trio make their way back there.

The human story behind the seemingly inexplicable mystery is revealed in a kind of seance in the small hours of Christmas Day. It is not a seance in the accepted sense,as Maltby later explains:

“We hatch ghosts in our own minds out of the logic that is beyond us. Logic, through science, may one day recapture the sounds of the Battle of Hastings, but this will not mean that the battle is still going on. Believe me, Mr. Hopkins, there are quite enough astounding, uncanny, mind-shattering experiences within the boundaries of sheer logic to eliminate the necessity of ghosts for our explanations or our thrills. We are only touching the fringe of these things. We have only touched the fringe of them in this house.”

This is a book of huge charm. The style and dialogue are, inevitably, of their time, but they only add to the magic combination of snow, mystery, Christmas, and, dare I say it, happier times. The novel was republished as a British Library Crime Classic in October of this year.

December 23, 2025 0

THE BARRAGE BODY . . . Between the covers

It is December, 1944, and we are in the Birmingham suburb of Erdington. Further afield, and quite unknown to both the residents of Erdington and the American soldiers shivering in their foxholes in the Ardennes Forest, Hitler is about to launch his last desperate gamble in what would come to be known as the Battle of The Bulge. In Erdington, war-wise, things are relatively quiet, but a barrage balloon unit, staffed by young women of that WAAF, is parked up at the Dunlop rubber factory, commonly known as Fort Dunlop.

It is here that Detective Chief Inspector Sam Mason is summoned, initially to investigate what appears to be a case of malicious communications, but things escalate rapidly. First it seems that someone has stolen vital blueprints for new and improved tyres for Lancaster bombers, and then, a body is discovered tethered to a barrage balloon which has unaccountably broken free.

Mason has a veritable 2000 piece jigsaw to put together. So many questions. Who was the man found dead in the barrage balloon cables? Why was jack-the-lad teenager Simon Samuels found in a similar position? What is the connection to Samuels’ father, a guard at a Staffordshire POW camp. Painstakingly, Mason and his redoubtable Sergeant O’Rourke have to move the pieces one by one until they begin to make a recognisable picture.

Sam Mason is quite unlike most British coppers in contemporary CriFi, partly because of the era in which was working. Because it is the 1940s we are quite content for him to rather stolid, happily married, prone to the aches and pains of late middle age. His deceptively gentle and slow-moving approach masks a sharp mind and a critical eye for detail. Here, he patiently absorbs the facts of a strange case, and delivers the goods.

This is the fourth Erdington Mystery. I enjoyed and reviewed the first of them, The Custard Corpses. The series couldn’t be more different from the books for which Porter is, perhaps, better known – dramatic swords, shields and helmets dramas from Saxon and Norman times. The books have one thing in common, however, and that is the setting – Mercia, the ancient kingdom we would now call The Midlands where, incidentally, Porter was born and brought up. The Barrage Body is original, inventive, nostalgic, absorbing, and I loved it. Published by MJ Publishing, it is available now.

December 17, 2025 0

GENESIS . . . Between the covers

Guy Portman has written a splendid series of dystopian satires centred around a sociopathic killer called Dyson Devereux and, after his demise, his son Horatio, who has inherited his father’s rather peculiar intelligence. Now, in the first of two prequels, Genesis gives us a glimpse into the life of the eleven year-old Dyson. It is 1985, and Dyson’s father, long since separated from his mother, has died of what we would coyly come to describe as ‘an AIDS-related illness.’ Portman’s black humour kicks in early when, at Devereaux senior’s funeral, there is a grotesque spat between a rather fey young man (presumably the partner of the deceased) and Dyson’s aunt.

Within weeks, Dyson is an orphan. His mother never recovers from a coma induced by the prescription drugs provided by her lover, the predatory Dr Trenton. Dyson vows revenge, but shares his maximum venom for his hateful cousin Beatrice, who has taunted him relentlessly over his father’s death. After living with her and his Aunt for a while, he is sent away to boarding school. Intellectually he thrives. His rapid grasp of Latin singles him out, but his status among his peers – minor foreign royalty, sons of the landed gentry and dimwits who happen to be good at rugby – is less certain. His heroic status among (most of) his fellow pupils is cemented, however, after he engineers a memorable encounter with a boy’s glamorous mother in her Mercedes, with half the members of Upper Four B watching from behind the bushes. This memorable feat is also his downfall, as it leads to his expulsion.

Dyson’s main obsession is his cousin Beatrice. He daydreams of ways he could cause her demise. In his most exotic and Byzantine vision, he has written to Jimmy Savile (this is the 1980s, remember) asking for Beatrice to be guillotined live on TV, as the climax to that week’s Jim’ll Fix It. The unfortunate girl’s actual demise is, however, marginally less less spectacular, and it involves a parish church outing to visit Beachy Head.

Readers who are familiar with Portman’s books will know what to expect, but for novitiates, here’s a brief primer. The author has a high powered literary rifle, and in its cross-hairs are Britain’s ‘lanyard class’, metropolitan socialists, indoctrinated social workers, people whose social consciences overlook all manner of atrocities, Guardianistas, bumbling teachers and so-called ‘community leaders’. Portman’s aim is unerring. Just like Finland’s fabled White Death, Simo Hayha, every time he squeezes the trigger, the target falls. Yes, this is satire, and fiction, but his writing carries a salutary message.

Guy Portman pushes the boundaries of humour up to – and occasionally beyond – the limits that some people might find acceptable, but he provides me, for, one, with laugh-out-loud moments. He is also a great literary stylist with a vast amoury of cultural references, and is one of our funniest living writers. Genesis is out now, and I will be reading and reviewing the next episode – Avengement – very soon.

December 15, 2025 0

THE REST IS DEATH . . . Between the covers

In a silky smooth segue from 2024’s For Our Sins, Edinburgh copper Tony McLean has returned from temporary retirement and is asked to investigate an apparently trivial break-in at a Biotech facility. Nothing seems to have been taken, no-one was harmed, so why is a Detective Chief Inspector sent on the job when it would normally be handled by a uniformed Sergeant? The answer is simple. Drake Biotech is owned and funded by billion are Nathanial Drake, who just happens to be on WhatsApp terms with Scotland’s First Minister.

When an old school chum approaches DI Janie Harrison with a request to look, for her missing boyfriend, a Serbian carpenter, Janie does a perfunctory search, but assumes the man has gone to ply his trade elsewhere. She has logged the photos from her chum’s phone, and is horrified to find, that when she is called out to woodland where a hastily buried body has been found, the remains are that of Vaclav Mihailovic.When the autopsy is carried out on the Serbian, the pathologist is both baffled and shocked. The unfortunate man is opened up, but there is no stench of decay. It seems that the gut bacteria that continue working away after the heart stops beating are mysteriously absent. There is no bloating and no breakdown of tissue.

Halfway through the book, Oswald escalates and complicates the narrative. First, the driver of the van that took the intruders to Blake Biotech is identified, but then rapidly disappears. McLean suspects he is working for an external intelligence agency. A professional protester called Sanderson, believed to be one of the Biotech vandals is found sitting on a park bench, stone dead. Then the bodies of both Sanderson and Mihailovic are stolen from the city mortuary. Long time fans of the Tony McLean novels have become accustomed to an element of the supernatural appearing in the narrative. Here, it comes in page one, but it is another 60 pages before we realise the relevance to Nathaniel Drake and his interests.

McLean ponders the situation:

“We’ve got a break-in at the lab by animal rights activists who turn out to be a diversion for some MI5 spook doing God knows what. One of the team turns up dead in the park, looking like he’s not eaten in months and shouldn’t have had the strength to wield a spray can, let alone smash up a lab. I’d really like to know what he died from, just in case I’ve got a new disease about to spread through the city.

But someone breaks into the mortuary and steals his body before the pathologist can have a proper look. And whoever does that has the ability to break the servers of a sophisticated security services company to order.

A company that, it turns out, is a fully owned subsidiary of Drake Corporation, whose labs were broken into. And am I going round in circles?”

Within the CriFi genre, police procedural investigations are not natural bedfellows with the paranormal. The late Phil Rickman made it work – in spades – and James Oswald does a pretty good job. He certainly pushes the boundaries here, and gives us a finale with an archetypal mad professor locked in a life or death struggle with McLean, Harrison, and the mummified heart of a man who was court magus to Vlad Dracul in the medieval Carpathian Mountains. All this aside, Oswald has given us a copper with instincts, compassion and humanity, coupled with the inner steel required to do what can often be a truly horrible job. The Rest is Death is published by Headline, and is available now.

December 5, 2025 0

SHOCKING CRIMES . . . Between the covers

We are in Dorset. Bournemouth, to be exact. But this is not the genteel Budmouth, Regency watering place of Thomas Hardy’s novels, but a much more hard-edged kind of place. The cast of coppers includes Detective Chief Superintendent Sophie Allen, Detective Chief Inspector Barry Marsh and Detective Inspector Lydia Pillay, Bournemouth CID, newly appointed to the role of DI.

Thirty eight year-old Pippa Chandler has been arrested for the murder of her disabled boyfriend Joshua Quick. She had recently inherited a house from her uncle and, while searching the property, police find a scrap of yellowing paper on which appears to be written a cry for help from a ten year-old child. A slapdash search of the house has revealed nothing of interest, but then a more assiduous crime technician discovers a false panel in the roof space. And behind the panel is a battered suitcase containing a grisly find – the dessicated remains of a child, later revealed to the corpse of a little girl.

Meanwhile, a seemingly unrelated investigation into a more recent tragedy is in focus. In a Bournemouth nightclub, a student called Holly collapses on the dance floor. She is rushed to hospital, where she lies between life and death. This wasn’t drink spiking, but ‘jabbing’ – a surreptitious injection with a throwaway hypodermic syringe, and Holly had an existing heart condition. In a dramatic and significant twist, Holly’s mother admits her historic links to the house where the child’s remains were found.

In general, there are two kinds of police/private investigator thrillers – the ones where the author keeps the perpetrator/s hidden from both us readers and the forces of law and order until the last few pages and those where we learn who the bad guys are early in the piece, with the entertainment coming from watching the police untangle the knots. Shocking Crimes largely falls into the latter category but Michael Hambling actually gives us the best of both worlds here. Yes, we learn early doors that Bruce Greenfield is a wrong ‘un, and we also know who his criminal associates were, but exactly who did what – and to whom – we discover through the eyes of the detectives.

Although elegantly plotted and with credible dramatis personnae, Shocking Crimes makes for uncomfortable reading at times as it delves into the fraught world of child protection, now known as Safeguarding. Having worked in this area myself, I am aware of the dark litany of historic failures laid at the door of professional adults charged with keeping young people from harm. In the end, as this novel shows, there are human beings so depraved and devoid of decency that no foolproof system to combat them has ever been devised. The novel will be published by Joffe Books on 13th November.

November 11, 2025 0

BLACK AS DEATH . . . Between the covers

This novel is the final episode in an Icelandic CriFi saga and, as ever, I am late to the party. Long story short, An Áróra’s sister Ísafold was being abused by her partner Björn, and when Ísafold went missing, with her body found much later, it was assumed that Björn was the killer. When his body is then found at the same site, the investigation is blown wide apart. An Áróra is in a relationship with Daníel, a detective, and when he finally reveals the chilling fact that Ísafold’s body has had the heart ripped from it, this grisly twist sets the stage for a thrilling and addictive narrative.

For series newcomers like me it takes a page or three to discover what An Áróra actually does for a living. She is a freelance forensic accountant, employed by various agencies – some government owned, some private – to mine down into the financial affairs of companies who seem to be doing rather too well.

Flashbacks tell us about Ísafold’s relationship with Björn, and they make painful reading, typifying everything we think we know about women who are dependent on abusive boyfriends or husbands. Björn was a minor cog in a drug empire run by a man called Sturla Larsen. Daníel has asked An Áróra to investigate the affairs of a coffee house chain called Kaffikó. They seem small and insignificant compared to the big international players, so why are they making a huge profit? An Áróra learns that Kaffikó have an influential private investor who owns half of the company stock.

It is then ‘answers on a postcard’ time as it appears that someone is using Kaffikó as money laundering scheme, and there are no prizes for anyone making the connection between the two apparently unconnected cases. It is easy to see why the five book series has been an outstanding success. The writing has tremendous pace, and verve, with An Áróra a striking and convincing central character. LIke most English readers my knowledge of the original language is absolute zero, but the translation by Lorenza Garcia seems both fluid and fluent.

My only criticism is that the ending was rather downbeat, but then who I am I to expect happy endings from the Icelandic Noir genre! Black as Death is ingeniously plotted, taut, and, occasionally, very bloodthirsty. It is out today, 23rd October, and published by Orenda Books.

October 23, 2025 1

THE HALLMARKED MAN . . . Between the covers

Confession time. Neither I nor my children were born recently enough to have been remotely interested in Harry Potter, and so when JKR entered the CriFi world with her Cormoran Strike books, I was only mildly interested. My loss. My mistake. ‘Bestseller’ is a fluid and relative term, much abused by hyperactive publicists, but if ‘Robert Galbraith’ has sold thousands of books, then good for her. She writes beautifully. Former military policeman turned private investigator Strike is “a broken-nosed Beethoven… over a stone off his ideal weight..” And with just half a leg.

The London PI has a deliciously fraught relationship with his business partner Robin Ellacott. He tries to push back thoughts that he is in love with her while, at the same time, mourning the suicide of his girlfriend, who slit her wrists in the bath because she knew what he knew. Meanwhile, Robin is unattainable, because of her commitment to her Met Police detective partner.

The latest case begins in a bizarre fashion. Strike is summoned to a near-derelict house in rural Kent, where a rich restaurateur, Decima Mullins, conceals a three-week-old baby beneath her poncho. The baby’s father, she tells him, was Rupert Fleetwood, an impoverished but well-connected ne’er do well. She believes he is dead, murdered and mutilated in a botched raid on a celebrated London silversmith. Her problem is that the police have identified the body as that of someone else altogether, and Decima wants closure.

A subtle touch of genius is the way in which the early action is framed around the English conventions of Christmas. Galbraith avoids the obvious, but hints at the family tensions; singletons quietly dreading the few days back with mum and dad, despite the echoes of happier times; the monstrous extravagance of Harrods; the relentless joviality in pubs and bars, smothering – for a while – any sense of loneliness, loss and insecurity, yet all the while, making for an emotional hangover that is sure to descend once the TV adverts ditch snowflakes and baubles for the equally false promises of holidays under a Mediterranean sun.

This book is very, very long, at just short of 900 pages, but its length gives the author the space to write with great perception and detail, in an almost Dickensian or Hardyesque way, about the way the main characters react and speak to each other. In the hands of a lesser writer, this might make for laborious reading, but here, every paragraph is precious.

Galbraith introduces a touch of the esoteric into the plot, and what can be more esoteric than the arcane symbolism of Freemasonry? The original robbery which gave us the dismembered corpse of – well, there’s something of a queue to join this particular ID parade – involved Masonic silver artifacts, not intrinsically priceless, but of great significance to the initiates.

I must mention the quotes at the beginning of each chapter. Some are from an obscure manual for Freemasons, written by Albert Pike, but others, from Matthew Arnold, Robert Browning, AE Housman are more evocative. We also hear the voice of John Oxenham, a long forgotten writer from the early twentieth century.

Nagging away, like a persistent bass counterpoint under the main tune, is the situation between Robin, her Met boyfriend Ryan, and Strike. Ryan Murphy seems to be everything that Strike is not; conventionally handsome, deeply in love, resolutely honest and utterly devoted to Robin. Murphy wants the elusive first home, the hungry cry of an infant in the night. But what does Strike want, or offer? Robin tells us:

“He was infuriating, stubborn and secretive when she wished he’d be open. But he was also funny and brave, and he’d been honest tonight when she’d expected him to lie. He was, in short, her imperfect best friend.”

The plot is Byzantine in its complexity, and Strike and Ellacott scour the country from Sark to Scotland before they finally discover the identity of the ‘hallmarked man’ and who killed him.. The denouement – in an unremarkable terraced house in the West Midlands – is breathtakingly violent, but my abiding thought about this magnificent novel is, “My God, how did she do this?” The Hallmarked Man is published by Sphere and is available now.