Edinburgh. This city will bleed you dry.

Dr Will Raven is a man seldom shocked by human remains, but even he is disturbed by the contents of a package washed up at the Port of Leith. Stranger still, a man Raven has long detested is pleading for his help to escape the hangman.

Back in the townhouse of Dr James Simpson, Sarah Fisher has set her sights on learning to practise medicine. Almost everyone seems intent on dissuading her from this ambition, but when word reaches her that a woman has recently obtained a medical degree despite her gender, Sarah decides to seek her out.

Raven’s efforts to prove his former adversary’s innocence are failing and he desperately needs Sarah’s help. Putting their feelings for one another aside, their investigations take them to both extremes of Edinburgh’s social divide, where they discover that wealth and status cannot alter a fate written in the blood.

Review:

Menacing, gripping, and addictive!

A Corruption of Blood is a vivid, unsettling tale that takes us back to Edinburgh and into the lives of Dr Will Raven and Sarah Fisher as they find themselves wrapped up in not only the suspicious death of one of the wealthiest men in the Scottish Lowlands, Sir Ainsley Douglas but also the case of a murdered infant that may, in fact, only be the start of a bigger more heinous murder spree than anyone could have imagined.

The prose is descriptive and tense. The characters are intelligent, curious, and committed. And the plot is a compelling tale of life, loss, secrets, friendship, courtship, abuse, revenge, manipulation, deception, greed, violence, early medicine, and murder.

Overall, A Corruption of Blood is another atmospheric, gritty, intricate novel by Parry that is a fantastic addition to the Raven, Fisher, Simpson series, and I can’t wait to read whatever this dynamic writing duo manages to come up with next.

This novel is available now.

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