An intricate and darkly atmospheric thriller set in Victorian London, perfect for readers of Elly Griffiths' The Stranger Diaries, Laura Purcell's The Silent Companions and Stuart Turton's The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle.

A world of secrets, murder and betrayal lie behind the London waterfront . . .

Summoned to the riverside by the desperate, scribbled note of an old friend, Jem Flockhart and Will Quartermain find themselves on board the seamen's floating hospital, an old hulk known only as The Blood, where prejudice, ambition and murder seethe beneath a veneer of medical respectability.

On shore, a young woman, a known prostitute, is found drowned in a derelict boatyard and a man leaps to his death into the Thames, driven mad by poison and fear. The events are linked - but how? Courting danger in the opium dens and brothels of the waterfront, certain that The Blood lies at the heart of the puzzle, Jem and Will embark on a quest to uncover the truth. In a hunt that takes them from the dissecting tables of a private anatomy school to the squalor of the dock-side mortuary, they find themselves involved in a dark and terrible mystery . . .

Praise for E.S. Thomson

'Jem Flockhart's London is vivid, pungent and perilous' Chris Brookmyre

'E. S. Thompson's Jem Flockhart books are the best I've read in years. Jem is just my kind of heroine: scarred, smart, complex, and unapologetically queer' Kirsty Logan, author of The Gloaming

'Jem Flockhart is a marvel . . . This vivid journey into the dark side of the human soul is a thoroughly engrossing tale' - Mary Paulson Ellis, author of The Other Mrs Walker