This could be the most astonishing whodunnit you are ever likely to read. As good as Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time... and with more twists and coils than a hangman's noose. 'The dead can't speak to us', Professor Madoc had said. That was a lie. Because the body Patrick Fort is examining in anatomy class is trying to tell him all kinds of things. Life is already strange enough for the obsessive Patrick without having to solve a possible murder. Especially when no one believes a crime has even taken place. Now he must stay out of danger long enough to unravel the mystery — while he dissects his own evidence. But as Patrick learns one truth from a dead man, he discovers there have been many other lies rather closer to home...

Shipcott in bleak mid-winter: a close knit community where no stranger goes unnoticed. So when an elderly woman is murdered in her bed, village policeman Jonas Holly is doubly shocked. How could someone have killed and left no trace? Jonas finds himself sidelined as the investigation is snatched away from him by an abrasive senior detective. Is his first murder investigation over before it's begun? But this isn't the end of it for Jonas, because someone in the village is taunting him, blaming him for the tragedy, and watching every move he makes...