Book
Voices of the Dead
First published 2023
Edinburgh, 1853. Human remains discovered at Surgeons’ Hall force Will Raven into the hunt for a killer who is unusually difficult to identify: an accomplished actor and master of disguise able to move through the city behind changing faces. As more evidence appears, Raven’s investigation draws on the anatomy rooms, theatres and professional networks of a city in which science and spectacle often share the same audience.
Sarah Fisher is pursuing another frontier. Mesmerism, spiritualism and claims of communication beyond ordinary consciousness are attracting public attention, and she sees therapeutic possibility in a field not yet closed to women by formal medical institutions. The novel places that fascination beside the scepticism of James Young Simpson and other physicians, asking how new knowledge can be distinguished from performance, fraud or belief. Victorian Edinburgh becomes a place where the hunger for scientific discovery creates opportunities for both genuine innovation and elaborate deception.
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