Simeon's Bride

Here is a remarkable debut. A novel of power and intensity - intricately woven, beautifully written and deeply convincing. This is P.D. James country but utterly original. Alison Taylor has a rare talent. A woman, little more than a skeleton, is found hanging in dense woodland outside Bangor, hands bound behind her back. Detective Chief Inspector Michael McKenna and his colleagues, seeking her identity and her killer, become enmeshed in deceit and half-truths, chasing shadows, scratching the poverty-stricken underbelly of life in an area of spectacular beauty, pursued by the malice of women, McKenna's bored and resentful wife wreaking her own havoc. Jamie Thief, amoral and vicious, a scavenger of human misery, is found with the dead woman's car, and goes into hiding. His death shreds the ugly tapestry of greed and perversion shrouding the woman in the woods, illuminating the darkness of a marriage gone wrong and its tragic consequences. Chief Inspector McKenna investigates the death of a woman found hanging in the woods. The death of the man found with her car illuminates the darkness of a marriage gone wrong and its tragic consequences, while McKenna's wife wreaks her own havoc.