Ian Hamilton Mysteries
2 primary works • 3 total works
Book 2
The prize-winning author of Edinburgh Twilight returns to the darkening shadows of nineteenth-century Scotland to track a killer on a profane mission of revenge.
A wicked Scottish winter has just begun when pioneering female physician Sophia Jex-Blake calls on Detective Inspector Ian Hamilton to investigate the suspicious death of one of her patients—a railroad lineman who she believes succumbed to the horrific effects of arsenic poisoning. The most provocative aspect of the case doesn’t escape Hamilton: the married victim’s numerous sexual transgressions.
Now, for the first time since the unexplained fire that killed his parents, Hamilton enters the Royal Infirmary to gain the insights of brilliant medical student Arthur Conan Doyle. Then a second poisoning occurs—this time, a prominent banker who died in the bed of a prostitute. It appears that someone is making Edinburgh’s more promiscuous citizens pay for their sins.
As the body count rises and public panic takes hold, Hamilton and Doyle delve into the seedy underbelly of the city, where nothing is as it seems, no one is immune to murder, and even trusted friends can be enemies in disguise.
Book 3
Superstition and murder haunt nineteenth-century Scotland in a twisting mystery by the prize-winning author of Edinburgh Twilight and Edinburgh Dusk.
Spiritualism has captured the public’s imagination. Séances are all the rage, and Detective Ian Hamilton’s otherwise sensible aunt Lillian is not immune to their allure. But for Ian, indulging her superstitions has its limits. When members of Lillian’s circle of séance friends begin turning up dead, Ian doesn’t need a medium to tell him these aren’t freak accidents.
With the help of his friend Arthur Conan Doyle, Ian investigates, and he is soon drawn into a dark world of believers and tricksters, and a puzzling series of murders with no pattern, no motive, and no end in sight. Most alarming, the crimes conjure up the ghosts of Ian’s own past, including the mysterious deaths of his parents, which have haunted him for years.
As two cases converge, science collides with the uncanny, and Ian must confront truths that are more disturbing than he could ever have imagined.
