A long, oily blackness punctuated by quick, vivid dreams . . . They were all just dreams. She couldn't possibly see these things, could she? Her eyes were closed. And if they really happened, then she would have screamed out from the pain, wouldn't she'
On a balmy June night, Kirsten, a young university student, strolls home through a silent moonlit park. Suddenly her tranquil mood is shattered as she is viciously attacked.When she awakes in hospital, she has no recollection of that brutal night.
But then, slowly and painfully, details reveal themselves - dreams of two figures, one white and one black, hovering over her, wisps of a strange and haunting song; the unfamiliar texture of a rough and deadly hand . . .
In another part of England, Martha Browne arrives in Whitby, posing as an author doing research for a book. But her research is of a particularly macabre variety. Who is she hunting with such deadly determination. And why.
About the Author
Peter Robinson was born in Castleford, Yorkshire, in 1950. He received a B.A. Honours Degree in English literature from the University of Leeds, moved to Canada, and went on to earn a M.A. in English and creative writing from the University of Windsor and a Ph.D. in English from York University. His first novel, Gallows View (1987), introduced Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks and became the first book in the Inspector Banks Mystery series. His other works include Caedmon's Song, No Cure for Love, and Not Safe after Dark and Other Stories. Past Reason Hated won the Crime Writers of Canada's Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel in 1992. Final Account (1994) won an Author's Award from the Foundation for the Advancement of Canadian Letters. He has also published many short stories in anthologies and in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, including Innocence, which won the CWC Best Short Story Award, and The Two Ladies of Rose Cottage, which won a Macavity Award. He has taught at a number of Toronto colleges and served as Writer-in-Residence at the University of Windsor, Ontario, 1992-93.
