Sacred Ends

Description

Paris, 1990. Comte de Landois has ordered his wife Marguerite to travel from Paris, to join him in the Loire valley. Her journey into the pastoral quiet is shattered by the appearance of a dead man on the railway tracks. Who is he, and why does Marguerite's young travelling companion pale when he sees him? When the Comte presents Marguerite with an adopted baby, and his sudden friendship with local clerics imposes new rules and regulations on her behavior, things start to take a sinister and troubling turn. The sister of her young companion goes missing and so Marguerite calls in Chief Inspector Durand to help hunt her down. Together they begin to unravel a tangled world of small-town secrets, sacred ends and unholy loves. Intriguing, chilling and lyrical, Sacred Ends is a rich and complex page-turner of a thriller that brings the Belle Epoque to life before soaring to its astonishing conclusion.

Lisa Appignanesi is the author of the prize-winning Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors; All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion, and Trials of Passion: In the Name of Love and Madness (all Virago). Her novels include The Memory Man (Arcadia) and the best-selling psychological thrillers The Dead of Winter and Sanctuary. She has also written the critically acclaimed memoir, Losing the Dead. She was President of English PEN, and is the Chair of the Freud Museum London, and Visiting Professor in Literature and the Medical Humanities at King s College London. In 2013 she was awarded an OBE for her services to literature.

'Fans of elegantly written and intricately plotted historical will relish this. . . Marguerite is a worthy addition to the ranks of strong independent female amateur sleuths.' * Publishers Weekly *