Laughton Rees

A wealthy woman is found brutally murdered in the locked fortress of her London mansion. Surrounding her are four mysterious objects, including a book on forensics by Dr Laughton Rees. As a teenager, Laughton’s life was destroyed after witnessing her mother’s brutal murder. Now a mother herself and forensic analyst, she is an expert on how to read crime scenes–but never works live cases.

A glamorous woman is murdered in her ultra-luxurious London mansion and her husband goes missing. But according to public records, neither of them exists. The only leads police have are several objects arranged around the woman’s body, including a set of keys and a book called How to Process a Murder by Laughton Rees—a book that appears to have helped the killer forensically cleanse the crime scene.

Midsummer’s Eve. Bonfires dot the English countryside and flicker in the ancient Forest of Dean as costumed revelers dance and drink the night away. But when the sun rises, a local girl, Maddie Friar, has vanished, last seen heading to a party in a forest commune called “The Clearing.” Her sister Adele reports her missing but the local police say Maddie was a known party girl and probably ran off with some boy, or maybe the “Cinderman” got her, referring to a local legend of a forest spirit said to haunt the woods in search of a lost daughter.

Something deadly lurks in the forest around Cinderfield. Locals put the unusually high number of disappearances down to transients or runaways; some even blame the Cinderman, a figure of local legend rumoured to haunt the woods looking for unsuspecting victims. Forensic specialist Laughton Rees doesn’t believe in monsters. Already investigating the area’s history of missing women, news of the latest ‘runaway’ Maddie Friar brings her to Cinderfield to find out the truth.

Laughton Rees is back in the latest novel from the bestselling author of the Sanctus trilogy—this time, with a case that hits uncomfortably close to home and threatens the thing Laughton values most: her daughter.