Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
The heart-pounding first installment of the MacNeice Mysteries, featuring a sophisticated detective solving the horrific murder of a beautiful young violinist — perfect for fans of Peter Robinson’s Alan Banks series.
Detective Superintendent MacNeice is returning from a pilgrimage to his wife’s grave when he’s called to a crime scene of singular and disturbing beauty. A young woman in evening dress lies gracefully posed on the floor of a pristine summer cottage so that the finger of one hand regularly interrupts the needle arm of a phonograph playing Schubert’s Piano Trio. The only visible mark on her is the bruise under her chin, which MacNeice recognizes: it is the mark that distinguishes dedicated violinists, the same mark that once graced his wife. The murder is both ingenious and horrific, and soon entangles MacNeice and his team in Eastern Europe’s ancient grievances…
“For crime fiction junkies, Scott Thornley’s first novel, Erasing Memory, a beautifully written police procedural set in a fictional version of Hamilton, just whets our appetite for more. Our hero, senior homicide detective Mac MacNeice, a literate and complex man who may remind the reader of Peter Robinson’s beloved Inspector Banks, runs an interesting team of investigators dealing with a truly weird murder. Please tell me this is the first of a series.” — Stevie Cameron
“[An] impressive debut . . . Superb writing, complex and highly likable characters, and the occasional delicious burst of violence definitely make the next books in this series worth watching for.” — Publisher's Weekly
“This series will be a real winner.” — Margaret Cannon, Globe and Mail
“Not since P. D. James’s Adam Dalgliesh has there been a police inspector as sophisticated as MacNeice.” — Toronto Star
“The reader is . . . compelled to go on, in part because that killer, if not a superior, twisted mind, is a first-class jerk and we love to see such people get their comeuppance.” — National Post