Crack the code. Stop the sequence. Catch the killer.

When homeless man Bobby Stover insists his friend’s suicide was really murder, DI Sheridan Holler is sceptical—until she uncovers a series of deaths, all of them in Liverpool, all ruled as suicides, that suddenly look like anything but. The killings span years, each one chillingly staged, the truth buried beneath an illusion of despair. This murderer is following a mysterious pattern—and there seems to be no end in sight.

Sheridan and her team find themselves in a race to crack the killer’s code, but when a crucial piece of the puzzle falls into place, they realise the next five victims have already been marked.

They don’t know who. They don’t know where. But they know it won’t stop here. Can they get one step ahead of a calculating killer?

T. M. Payne was born in Lee-on-Solent, Hampshire, and now lives on the Wirral with her wonderful partner.

She is the bestselling author of the Detective Sheridan Holler series. Her debut novel, Long Time Dead, went to number one in crime fiction in both the UK and Germany.

She has spent most of her working life in the criminal justice system, starting out as a store detective (where she once got thrown in a river) before becoming a prisoner custody officer (where she once carried a prisoner out of the courtroom single-handedly when he started hallucinating butterflies).

She has worked in practically every London court, including the Old Bailey and Court of Appeal, and has been handcuffed to murderers, rapists, and dealt with some of the most violent prisoners to pass through the court system. In 2001, she joined Norfolk Police as a detention officer, working in the custody suite, before joining the Domestic Violence Unit as a police case investigator. In her fourteen years in that role, she dealt with thousands of victims of domestic abuse, with one of her cases earning her a chief constable’s commendation. She now writes full-time.

T. M. Payne is crazy about animals and if you walk past her with your dog she will probably ask if she can pat it on the head. Or take it home with her. Or both.

She hopes to one day have seven dogs, fifteen cats and a penguin (or three).

She loves laughing, Christmas, playing golf (badly), walking along New Brighton Beach (not walking her dog because she hasn’t got one yet), snow, sunshine, sunsets, family and friends.

She dislikes beetroot.