A Match for the Dead

The dead don't lie. But God, do they go quiet — and it's Nora Frayne's job to make them talk.

In a fading English seaside town where the amusement arcade flickers its last dead bulbs and the tide pulls out across sand the colour of wet cement, Nora earns a small, odd, badly-paid living by listening to the dead. A forensic genealogist, she coaxes family trees from DNA samples and crumbling parish records, restoring names to the nameless, reuniting the adopted with the blood they came from. It's not a normal thing to be good at. She's rebuilt her whole life around it, plate by plate, out of her own rubble.

Then a gentle client climbs her stairs clutching an unopened DNA kit she's carried for months. Marian's adoptive mother is gone; now she only wants to know whose face she's got. An ordinary, tearful search — or it should be.

Instead the trail leads to a man the whole town buried with full honours twenty-three years ago. Tom Garrow, coxswain, OUR BRAVEST SON, lost in the worst sea in living memory, his bronze still selling fudge at the heritage centre. A hero whose blood, impossibly, is still being passed on. The dead do not father the living. Someone helped this one disappear — and someone has spent two decades keeping the truth in the ground.

When a man who knew too much is found dead at the foot of the old boathouse steps, Nora realises the tide is turning against her. Old loyalties are hardening. And her quiet gift for hearing the dead has just written her name onto a very dangerous list.

Told in a wry, aching, unforgettable voice, A Match for the Dead is perfect for readers who love clever amateur sleuths, atmospheric coastal settings, and mysteries knotted deep in family secrets.

Some secrets are buried with the dead. This one refuses to stay down.

Start reading the first Nora Frayne mystery today.