Tora, a pediatrician who's just moved to the Shetland Islands, comes across the body of a young girl, buried in her land. Turns out the girl shows signs of having given birth before she died, and having suffered torture before being killed.

This was written before The Awakening - it's the author's first book - and in retrospect it feels like maybe it was a dry-run for that book - at least, the books share a lot of very similar components, and this book feels a bit less tightly put together than the other one. E.g.

• both books feature a female heroine living in a remote community who finds herself drawn into the investigation of a gruesome murder.
• this book has a pediatrician who happends to have studied pathology who comes across a corpse; in that book it's a vet who happens to have studied reptiles who finds herself in a village overrun by snakes
• Tora has a reputation for being brusque and rubbing people up the wrong way so finds it hard to cultivate friendships; Clara in the other book has a scar which means she shuns the company of others
• Both Tora and Clara find themselves wandering round buildings in the dark

The actual explanation for what was going on made me laugh out loud when it was explained, but maybe truth is stranger than fiction - the day I finished the book there was a TV programme on about the Catholic church stealing babies and selling them to people who wanted to adopt, while telling the mothers that the babies had died.

Well, maybe the book's plot was a bit more outrageous than that.

Not as good as The Awakening because it was a bit too long, and not quite so creepy. But I would try another book by SJ Bolton, since it seems like she gets better after the first one.

Completed : 19-Oct-2011 (audiobook)