Bleeding Heart Square
Winner of Sweden’s Martin Beck Award 2009
Shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger
"Andrew Taylor has long been in the top rank of British crime writers.... In Bleeding Heart Square, he excels himself" - Marcel Berlins, The Times.
If Philippa Penhow hadn’t gone to Bleeding Heart Square on that January day, you and perhaps everyone else might have lived happily ever after…
It’s 1934, and the decaying London cul-de-sac of Bleeding Heart Square is an unlikely place of refuge for aristocratic Lydia Langstone. But as she flees her abusive marriage there is only one person she can turn to - the genteelly derelict Captain Ingleby-Lewis.
But 7 Bleeding Heart Square is a place of secrets. What happened to Miss Penhow, the middle-aged spinster who owns the house and who vanished four years earlier? Why is a seedy plain-clothes policeman obsessively watching the square? What is making struggling journalist Rory Wentwood so desperate to contact Miss Penhow?
Parcels of rotting hearts being sent to Joseph Serridge, the last person to see Miss Penhow alive. Legend has it the Devil once danced in Bleeding Heart Square. And now there is a new and sinister presence lurking in its shadows.
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Selected Reviews
'It's crime, but I'd hate to think of it being ghettoised, with lovers of good fiction missing this absorbing and sinister story. There's a big trade and consumer campaign to come and I'd expect to see this high in the bestseller charts.' - Sue Baker, Publishing News
Bleeding Heart Square is published by Michael Joseph/Penguin in the UK, by Hyperion in the US, Goldmann (Germany), Klim (Denmark) and Forum (Sweden). Forthcoming editions include ones from France (Cherche-Midi) and Zysk (Poland). You can order from Amazon or from any good bookshop; or if you prefer the personal touch you can find it at the Forest Bookshop, Coleford, where signed copies are also available.