Forensic psychologist Megan Rhys has been asked to advise the police on the murders of two young prostitutes. Seemingly, the women are victims of two killers working together. But there is something wrong with the information the police are giving her. Someone is trying to manipulate her. Or are her own prejudices coloring her judgment? As the killings add up, Megan is being pushed harder and harder toward one solution—and someone is getting into her house. Is the killer closer than she realizes? Is a member of her own family betraying her?

Last year Frozen introduced Welsh crime writer Lindsay Jayne Ashford to U.S. mystery fans. Now Strange Blood, the next in this critically acclaimed series, has been shortlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year. Fellow nominees include Val McDermid, Ian Rankin, and Stephen Booth. In this second crime novel to feature forensic psychologist Dr. Megan Rhys, she is called in to help police investigate what they believe to be a ritual killing. But as more women die, and as the press, the police, her boss, and even her own family turn on her, Megan stakes everything on finding the killer.

Megan Rhys is due at a police conference on sex offenders—not a particularly nice subject, but it does mean she can get away from her office at Birmingham’s Heartland University and spend a few days by the sea at her grandmother’s cottage in Borth. It turns out not to be quite the kind of break she was anticipating when a body turns up, miraculously preserved, in the bog behind the golf course. It seems that her place of refuge is no longer a safe haven from the violence that is her stock in trade. Only time and the pathologist will tell if the mutilated bog man is an ancient or a modern relic of man’s inhumanity to man, but not before Megan’s skills in forensic psychology and her unerring gut instinct for trouble are tested to the limits by a ruthless killer determined on revenge for past misdeeds.

Book by Ashford, Lindsay Jayne, Ashford

Forensic psychologist Megan Rhys leads another investigation in this fourth installment of the series, this time into the unusually high suicide rate among prisoners at the grim Victorian Balsall Gate jail in Birmingham. While she is there yet another death occurs, and although the police are uninterested—to them this is just another drug overdose—Megan is not convinced. Carl Kelly died in agony from something even more lethal than heroin, telling his cellmate he was being haunted by the ghost of a man he'd stabbed to death. But if Megan's instinct is right and Kelly was murdered, who is the killer?

A body is dragged from the water. It holds a deadly secret. Touch it and you might be next to die... The small community of Borth is rocked by the discovery of a mutilated corpse in the treacherous wilderness bordering the sea. The identity of the gruesome remains is a mystery but within days there is a second death to investigate. Then a third. The police are baffled by the disparity in age, sex and manner of death of the victims. Psychological profiler Megan Rhys is supposed to be on holiday but as she is drawn into the murder inquiry her forensic skills are tested to the limit by a ruthless killer who will guard the secrets of the past no matter what the cost. Reviews: ‘Chilling…will appeal to those who enjoy the forensic procedurals of Kathy Reichs.’ Library Journal (for Frozen). ‘Patricia Cornwell has patented the persona of the doughty heroine who bucks the system, but Ashford is closer to her personal demons.’ The Guardian (for Strange Blood). ‘Gritty, streetwise and raw…with an authenticity and detail born of Ashford’s own journalistic experience.’ Denise Hamilton, author of the Eve Diamond crime novels (for Frozen).