We are delighted to welcome Ambrose Parry to Waterstones Nottingham to celebrate the release of The Death of Shame, the latest book in the Raven and Fisher Mystery series.
1854, Edinburgh.
Respectable faces hide private sins.
Apprentice Sarah Fisher is helping to fund Dr Will Raven's emerging medical practice in exchange for being secretly trained as a medic, should the rules barring women ever change. Sarah needs no instruction in the inequalities that beset her gender, but even she has her eyes opened to a darker reality when a relative seeks her help in searching for her missing daughter. Annabel Banks was promised a situation in a prestigious household, but there has been no word from her since she left home, and the agency that arranged her position says she never appeared.
Sarah's inquiries lead her to reforming campaigners trying to publicise the plight of the hundreds of girls ensnared in Edinburgh's houses of assignation. Sarah learns how young women are lured, deceived, trafficked and raped, leaving them ruined in the eyes of a society obsessed with moral purity, and where virginity is prized as a lucrative commodity.
Drawing upon real historical events, The Death of Shame takes Raven and Sarah into a treacherous labyrinth of exploitation, corruption, and immorality.
Chris and Marisa will talk about their new book before an audience Q&A and book signing.
Ambrose Parry is a pseudonym for a collaboration between Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman. The couple are married and live in Scotland. Chris Brookmyre is the international bestselling and multi-award-winning author of twenty-one novels, including The Cracked Mirror, a Waterstones Paperback of the Year 2025 and Black Widow, winner of both the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Dr Marisa Haetzman is a consultant anaesthetist of twenty years' experience, whose research for her Master's degree in the History of Medicine uncovered the material upon which this novel was based.