*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



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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.