DS Liam Kilshaw

Once you cross the wrong lines, there’s no turning back. For DS Liam Kilshaw, a former marine who almost died on a mission gone wrong, returning to the sea was meant to help combat his PTSD. But when he’s called out with the lifeboat crew off the rugged Cornish coast at night, the dark...

When a mutilated body washes up on Sennen Beach, DS Liam Kilshaw is plunged into a case as dark and unforgiving as the Cornish winter. With the victim’s face so severely disfigured that identification is impossible, whispers of a local superstition begin to surface—the killing bears a chilling resemblance to the legend of Bucca Dhu, a vengeful sea demon said to demand human sacrifice.

When the body of a teenage girl is found posed in the Merry Maidens stone circle, her face coated in clay and ochre, DS Liam Kilshaw is drawn into a case where near-forgotten fictions bleed into brutal fact. With echoes of an old folktale of dancers turned to stone, the scene is more about staging than superstition. And when two skeletons are unearthed beneath a nearby stone, Kilshaw realises the past is far from dead and buried.

When Dominic Waddington’s body is discovered at the base of a Cornish clifftop after days of captivity, DS Liam Kilshaw faces a case unlike any he’s encountered. The victim wasn’t beaten or stabbed—he was broken by relentless, targeted sound. A method as cruel as it is calculated. A former special forces operative still battling his own demons, Kilshaw and partner DI Maya Trent soon uncover a pattern. The victims are connected—each linked to a verdict that set a murderer free. Someone believes justice was denied, and they’re exacting their own brutal punishment.