The bone garden

Julia Hamill has just divorced and bought an old house in rural Massachusetts. While she digs in the garden, she turns up a human skull. The bones point to a crime that has lain cold for over a century.

The house's late former owner left papers behind, and the woman's elderly cousin brings them to Julia. They carry the story back to Boston in 1830, where medical student Norris Marshall pays for his studies by robbing graves. When a woman is brutally murdered and a killer is stalking the wards of a Boston hospital, Norris is drawn into the hunt.

Rose Connolly, a seamstress, is the only person who glimpsed the killer. She works alongside Norris, with a young Oliver Wendell Holmes helping them. Norris needs to clear his own name before the murderer kills again.

This is a historical mystery told in two timelines. The 1830s strand is built on the grim medicine of the period: grave robbing, primitive surgery and the dangers of childbirth. The author is a physician. The present-day strand moves more slowly, piecing together how the buried bones link the two eras.