DI Meg Dalton

Shortlisted for the CWA Debut Dagger Award The Times Crime Book of the Month, April 2018 ‘A fascinating debut’ The Sunday Times ‘A touch of Agatha Christie, a dash of Ann Cleeves’s Vera and a suitably moody setting in the Peaks…bring a formidable newcomer to British crime writing.’...

She was racing towards the gorge. The place the locals knew as ‘Dead Girl's Drop'. DI Meg Dalton is thrown headlong into her latest case when she finds a 10-year-old girl running barefoot through the woods in a blood-soaked nightdress. In the house nearby, the girl's father has been brutally stabbed to death. At first Meg suspects a robbery gone tragically wrong, but something doesn’t add up. Why does the girl have no memory of what happened to her? And why has her behaviour changed so dramatically since her recent heart transplant?

When beautiful, young social-media star and poster-girl for meat-eating Violet goes missing, her supporters are quick to accuse animal-rights activists of playing a part in her disappearance. The clock is ticking for DI Meg Dalton to find Violet before an all-out war escalates. And then the blood and hair of a young woman are found in an empty pig trough at the local abattoir. When a second body is discovered, a murder investigation is launched. The more Meg finds out about this chilling case, the more she’s convinced that someone has Violet - someone who knows her.