Someone's getting away with murder … and they'll do anything to keep it that way. The skull hunter's rotting spot hides a secret, while the families on the sea-lashed Northumbrian headland hide several more. When Lucy Seaton goes missing, her friend Erica Bruce is convinced there's a link to the disappearance of Lucy's cousin years before. At first, Inspector Will Bennett's sceptical of Erica's homeopathy and love of William Blake's prophecies, so she begins her own investigation, contending with Lucy's steely mother and religious aunt—and the doubtful assistance of excess-loving Stacey.

NOW, THIS WON'T HURT... we all know what that means! In the second Erica Bruce and Will Bennett mystery, a sadistic orthopaedic surgeon is bizarrely killed. Soon it appears someone’s giving doctors a taste of their own medicine - murdering surgeons and mutilating the bodies to mimic the operations they perform. The media dub the killer ‘The Operator’. This action-packed thriller reunites Erica Bruce, small but fierce alternative health therapist and journalist, with tall, dark, athletic Detective Inspector Will Bennett, full-on sceptic. With its medical theme it is a shade darker than THE ROTTING SPOT, but with lots of witty Tyneside banter from shamelessly excess-loving Stacey Reed. The setting is the North East coast of England: historic castles and rural beauty mixing with louche seafront winebars, from the lighthouse at Wydsand to the mouth of the River Tyne itself, venue of a dramatic set piece where the mighty, hostile North Sea tests Erica to the limit.