Tragedy strikes Minnie Ward's beloved Variety Palace Theatre when a man is found dead in suspicious circumstances. Along with private detective Albert Easterbrook, she investigates. The trail leads them from the streets of London to a grand country house in the Suffolk countryside, home of the shadowy Spirit Sisterhood, who promise their clients an audience with the deceased. Minnie isn't buying it. She goes undercover within the Sisterhood and enters an eerie world of seances and mediums. But unravelling their secrets will bring Minnie face-to-face with ghosts from her own past. Can she get to the truth before the murderer kills again?



Bridget Walsh was born in London to Irish immigrant parents. She studied English literature at university and later acquired both a PhD in Victorian domestic murder and an obsessive interest in the weirder elements of nineteenth-century life. Bridget lives in Norwich with her husband, Micky, and her two dogs. Her debut and the first book in the Variety Palace Mysteries The Tumbling Girl won the Historical Writers Association Debut Crown and was shortlisted for the CWA John Creasey Dagger. The Innocents was longlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year. Both are available from Pushkin Vertigo.