Cirrus@Austlit

'A woman. A doctor. A beastly science. At the turn of the twentieth century, London's political climate is in turmoil, as women fight for the right to vote. Dody McCleland has her own battles to fight. As England's first female autopsy surgeon, she must prove herself as she also proves that murder treats everyone equally... After a heated women's rights rally turns violent, an innocent suffragette is found murdered. When she examines the body, Dody is shocked to realise that the victim was a friend of her sister - fuelling her determination to uncover the cause of the protester's suspicious death. For Dody, gathering clues from a body is often easier than handling the living - especially Chief Detective Inspector Matthew Pike. Pike is looking to get to the bottom of this case but has a hard time trusting anyone - including Dody. Determined to earn Pike's trust and to find the killer, Dody will have to sort through real and imagined secrets. But if she's not careful, she may end up on her own examination table ...'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

When an act of compassion misfires, autopsy surgeon Dr Dody McCleland must fight not only for her career, but also for her life.

'The body of a scullery maid is discovered in her room. When it emerges that she had recently begged Dody to terminate an unwanted pregnancy, the coroner recommends Dody be tried for criminal abortion causing death. Meanwhile, the one man who might be able to help her, Chief Inspector Matthew Pike, is nowhere to be found. After another woman′s body is discovered bearing all the hallmarks of the same crime, Dody suspects that a rogue doctor is on the loose.

'Amid the turbulence of Edwardian London with its mix of strikes, suffragettes, German spies, exotic dancers and an illicit drug trade, Dody must unmask the killer before more girls are butchered and her own life ends on the gallows.

[From the publisher's website]

'If a black dog appears along the old corpse way, the route a funeral procession takes to the churchyard, it is thought to be escorting the dead soul to the afterlife. A black dog sighting without a funeral procession, however, is supposed to foreshadow death.'

For Doctor Dody McCleland, the unearthing of an ancient skeleton in a dry riverbed is a welcome break from the monotony of chaperoning her younger sister at a country house near the isolated hamlet of Piltdown. But when she begins her analysis of the bones, Britain's first female autopsy surgeon discovers they are much more recent – and they are the result of murder. With Chief Inspector Matthew Pike's help Dody begins to investigate. Soon she finds herself pitted against ugly traditionalism, exploitation, spectral dogs, a ghostly hunt and a series of events that not only threaten her belief in scientific rationalism, but threaten her life itself. '

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'The fourth engrossing mystery in the acclaimed Dr Dody McCleland series, featuring Britain's first female autopsy surgeon.

'To Doctor Dody McCleland, the gruesome job of dealing with the results of an explosion at the Necropolis Railway Station is testing enough. But when her suffragette sister Florence is implicated in the crime, matters worsen and Dody finds her loyalty cruelly divided. Can she choose between love for her sister and her secret love for Chief Inspector Matthew Pike, the investigating officer on the case?

'Dody and Pike's investigations lead them to a women's rest home where patients are not encouraged to read or think and where clandestine treatments and operations are conducted in an unethical and inhumane manner. Together Dody and Pike must uncover such foul play before their secret liaisons become public knowledge - and before Florence becomes the rest home's next victim.' (Publication summary)

'The fifth in the Dr Dodi McCleland series - Agatha Christie meets Phryne Fisher

'Forensic doctor Dody McCleland is horrified when the seemingly dead body of a well-dressed woman she has just sliced with her scalpel bolts upright with a howl. Dody has heard of bodies frozen into a false death before but never come face to face with the phenomenon. She feels a terrible debt - and a strange connection - to this woman, discovered incongruously near the notorious Anchor and Whistle public house. Yet Dody is puzzled: how did a woman of such means and intelligence come to be left for dead in the icy cold of this unsavoury district?

'Meanwhile, Chief Inspector Pike has a gang of jewel thieves with a trail of murder behind them bailed up in a burning building. When one of the gang escapes, and the remainder are found assassinated at close range, it is clear the modus operandi of the chief suspect has brutally shifted. Then Pike discovers both that the king has an interest in the gang's stolen jewels and that his superior is suspected of corruption. Threats to his career and his relationship with Dody further intensify an already delicate situation.

'Join Dody and Pike as they work to find out who is behind the carnage, discover who Dody's new friend really is, and if there's any hope of them ever sharing a future together.' (Publication summary)