'Just brilliant.' DONAL RYAN 'An exceptionally good book.' C.J. SANSOM1816 was the year without a summer. A rare climatic event has brought frost to July, and a lingering fog casts a pall over a Dublin stirred by zealotry and civil unrest, torn between evangelical and rationalist dogma. Amid the disquiet, a young nursemaid in a pious household conceals a pregnancy and then murders her newborn.Rumours swirl about the identity of the child’s father, but before an inquest can be held, the maid is found dead.When Abigail Lawless, the eighteen-year-old daughter of Dublin's coroner, by chance discovers a message from the maid’s seducer, she is drawn into a world of hidden meanings and deceit. An only child, Abigail has been raised amid the books and instruments of her father’s grim profession.Pushing against the restrictions society places on a girl her age, she pursues an increasingly dangerous investigation.As she leads us through dissection rooms and dead houses, Gothic churches and elegant ballrooms, a sinister figure watches from the shadows - an individual she believes has already killed twice, and is waiting to kill again... Determined, resourceful and intuitive, Abigail Lawless emerges as a memorable young sleuth operating at the dawn of forensic science.