A corruption of blood

Ambrose Parry

Book - 2021

"Dr Will Raven is a man seldom shocked by human remains, but even he is disturbed by the contents of a package washed up at the Port of Leith. Stranger still, a man Raven has long detested is pleading for his help to escape the hangman. Back at 52 Queen Street, Sarah Fisher has set her sights on learning to practise medicine. Almost everyone seems intent on dissuading her from this ambition, but when word reaches her that a woman has recently obtained a medical degree despite her gender, Sarah decides to seek her out. Raven's efforts to prove his erstwhile adversary's innocence are failing and he desperately needs Sarah's help. Putting their feelings for one another aside, their investigations will take them to both extr...emes of Edinburgh's social divide, where they discover that wealth and status cannot alter a fate written in the blood"--

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Subjects
Genres
Detective and mystery fiction
Historical fiction
Medical fiction
Fiction
Published
Edinburgh : Canongate Books Ltd 2021.
Language
English
Main Author
Ambrose Parry (author)
Item Description
Map on endpapers.
Physical Description
406 pages : black and white map ; 25 cm
ISBN
9781786899859
Contents unavailable.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Parry (the pen name of husband-and-wife writing team Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman) makes excellent use of Haetzman's experience as an anesthetist and a medical historian in his stellar third whodunit set in 19th-century Edinburgh (after 2019's The Art of Dying). When wealthy and influential Sir Ainsley Douglas dies of arsenic poisoning in 1850, Gideon, Douglas's son, who recently fought with his father, is charged with patricide. Physician Will Raven gives in to his fiancée's entreaties that he work to exonerate her friend Gideon, despite regarding the suspect, whom he knew in medical school, as "arrogant and detestable." Raven finds Gideon's argument for his innocence--that he'd never have used a poison so easily detectable--compelling but faces an uphill battle in getting the police to agree. Meanwhile, Will's colleague, Sarah Fisher, a former servant aspiring to become a physician, searches for a missing baby on behalf of its mother. The integration of real history--Douglas's advocacy of the arrest of prostitutes to contain the spread of STDs is based on real legislation--enhances a page-turning plot. Imogen Robertson fans will be delighted. Agent: Sophie Scard, United Agents (U.K.). (Oct.)

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