1888. When young Scottish scientist James Murray receives a letter from Sofia Esposito, a woman he once loved and lost, he cannot refuse her cry for help. Sofia's fifteen-year-old cousin has vanished but, because of her lower-class status, the police are unwilling to investigate. Accompanied by his younger sister Lucy, Murray returns to the city of Turin where he was once apprenticed to the world-famous criminologist, Cesare Lombroso. As he embarks on his search for the missing girl, Murray uncovers a series of mysterious disappearances of young women and rumours of a haunted abbey on the outskirts of the city. When the body of one of the girls turns up bearing evidence of a satanic ritual, Murray begins to slot together the pieces of the puzzle. But as two more bodies are discovered, Murray learns that his sister has unwittingly put herself in mortal danger. Now a desperate hunt begins to find both Lucy and Sofia's young cousin before they become the next victims of a truly terrifying killer. The Devil's Daughters is the gripping new novel from Diana Bretherick, author of City of Devils.
I tried. I put it down, I picked it back up, but ultimately only made it 100 pages in. The prose read like a 12th grade creative writing project and constantly made reference to a first book in the series which I didn't know existed, let alone read. Ultimately I gave up.
