Author: Taylor, Andrew
Crime & mystery
Published on 26 February 2026 by HarperCollins Publishers (Hemlock Press) in the United Kingdom.
Paperback | 384 pages
197 x 130 x 30 | 338g
*A Times Best Book of the Year*
From the author of The Ashes of London, comes a new historical mystery set in the last days of WWII
'Ten out of ten' The Times
‘A grand piece of work – a triumph and one of Taylor’s best’ MICK HERRON
'A wonderfully unique novel from the master of historical crime fiction. Beautiful, haunting, and quite brilliant' LAURA SHEPHERD-ROBINSON
‘As good as I’d expect from a master of the craft’ VAL MCDERMID
'A wonderful, subtle novel, set in a strange, enclosed world. Beautiful writing and a gloriously satisfying ending' ANN CLEEVES
England, May 1945
In the last days of World War II, Monkshill Park School for Girls stands far apart from the violence in Europe. Yet a woman has been murdered in its grounds.
Annabel Warnock, a teacher with a secretive past, has disappeared. The teachers and girls whisper that she’s run away, but in fact she has met a violent end.
Replacement tutor and amateur crime writer Alec Shaw arrives to find a school riven with bitter rivalries and dangerous tensions. He begins to suspect there is a real-life mystery waiting to be solved… and these echoing halls hide a killer.
