Death duties - Phil Lovesey

A chilling psychological mystery novel from an exciting new talent.

Maldon, Essex, 1969: two policemen and a WPC listen intently as a seven-year-old girl calmly tells them why she's just killed her father.

Thirty years later, the grotesque killing of an old woman, found daubed in cheap make-up, baffles the police, and the discovery of a second body sends the press into a frenzy, demanding answers to the mystery of the Christmas Killer.

The three original officers find themselves on a journey fraught with emotional discoveries and hidden secrets in an attempt to solve the killings, for it is only by unravelling the half-truths and deceptions of the past that a deranged killer's twisted intentions can be halted in the future.

Born in Essex in 1963, and son of crime writer Peter Lovesey, Phil Lovesey was educated at Tiffin Boys School before taking a foundation course in art. After a degree in film and television studies, he went into advertising, turning to 'proper' writing in 1994. He lives in Chelmsford, is married to his dream woman, and has two young children. Death Duties was his first novel.

'Chilling and deviously plotted'
Val McDermid, The Times

'Terrific plot, and a name to watch'
Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday

'Ingenious, interesting debut novel'
Literary Review

'A promising new young British voice'
Time Out