Death duties - Phil Lovesey

A chilling psychological mystery novel from an exciting new talent

Denbury, Essex, 1965, and two young policemen and a WPC listen intently as a seven-year-old girl calmly tells them why she's just killed her father.

Placed in the protective care of her aunt, the young girl grows into a murderously effective euthanasia machine, ending suffering for those she's convinced would be better off in another world.

Thirty years later, an old woman is discovered murdered in her flat, hideously daubed with cheap make-up. Police are baffled, searching for a motive to give any kind of clue as to the killer. The appearance of a second body, days later, sends the press into a frenzy, demanding answers to the gruesome mystery of the Christmas Killer.

It takes the combined talents of all three original officers to delve deeply into their own pasts and insecurities to solve the killings - a journey fraught with uncomfortable emotional discoveries and hidden secrets. 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.

Phil Lovesey's chilling novel combines all the excitement of a murder mystery with a depth of psychological insight into the areas of child manipulation and psychopathy that will fascinate and haunt the reader. Death Duties marks the debut of a remarkable new talent.