Lady Midnight

Emma Carstairs is seventeen, a Shadowhunter living at the Los Angeles Institute, and five years have passed since the Dark War took her parents. She has one aim: to find the person who murdered them. Her partner in the work is Julian Blackthorn, her parabatai, and Shadowhunter Law forbids the two of them from ever falling in love.

The case reopens when a series of ritual murders begins in Los Angeles. The victims include both faeries and mundanes, and the killings echo the one that cost Emma her parents. She and Julian take the investigation on themselves.

They are joined by Julian's older brother, Mark, who has only just come back to the family after five years held captive by the faerie Wild Hunt. His return brings its own strain to a household already stretched by the hunt for a killer.

This is urban fantasy with a murder-mystery spine, told in third person. As the inquiry deepens, Emma and Julian have to decide how much they will risk to learn the truth and to protect the people they love.

Lady Midnight is the first novel in The Dark Artifices, a trilogy that follows The Mortal Instruments and is the fourth series in the Shadowhunter Chronicles.