The sleepy Sussex village of Lakehurst has suddenly become a place of terror and night shadows. After dark it is hardly safe to go out, to the consternation of the newly arrived vicar, trendy young Nick Lawrence, and Inspector Dominic Tennant of the Sussex Police Force. For a serial killer is on the loose, one who leaves notes at the scenes of their crimes signed “The Acting Light of the World”. The local inhabitants are all...
In Venice, Frances Croy is working to leave the previous year behind: another novel published to little success, a scathing review she can't quite manage to forget, and, most of all, the real reason behind her self-imposed exile from London: the incident at the Savoy. Sequestered within an aging palazzo, Frankie finds comfort in the emptiness of Venice in winter, in the absence of others. And then Gilly appears.