An "excellent," darkly-told crime novel in the tradition of Tana French and Ian Rankin ( Wall Street Journal ).

Sergeant Alexandra Cupidi is a recent transfer from the London metro police to the rugged Kentish countryside. She's done little to ingratiate herself with her new colleagues, who find her too brash, urban, and — to make matters worse — she investigated her first partner, a veteran detective, and had him arrested on murder charges.

Now assigned the young Constable Jill Ferriter to look after, she's facing another bizarre case: a woman found floating in local marsh land, dead of no apparent cause. The case gets even stranger when the detectives contact the victim's next of kin, her son, a high-powered graphic designer living in London. Adopted at the age of two, he'd never known his mother, he tells the detectives, until a homeless woman knocked on his door, claiming to be his mother, just the night before: at the same time her body was being dredged from the water.

Juggling the case, her aging mother, her teenage daughter, and the loneliness of country life, Detective Cupidi must discover who the woman really was, who killed her, and how she managed to reconnect with her long lost son, apparently from beyond the grave.

"[Shaw] is a meticulous, thoughtful and insightful writer. I can't wait for Sgt. Cupidi's next case." — Sara Paretsky, New York Times–bestselling author of the V.I. Warshawski novels.

"Excellent. . . . The combination of great characters and a gripping plot will leave readers eager for a sequel." — Publishers Weekly, starred review

William Shaw