Inspector McLean

The body of a man is found hanging in an empty house. To the Edinburgh police force, this appears to be a simple suicide case. But something about the scene strikes Detective Inspector Tony McLean as off. Days later another body is found hanging from an identical rope, with a noose tied in the identical way. McLean is convinced that these people are either being murdered or somehow coerced into suicide. Then a third body is found. Under pressure from his superiors to wrap the case up quickly and neatly, McLean must also deal with the fallout of his last big investigation and complications in his personal life. But the deeper he digs, the more he comes to believe that something dark and sinister is stalking Edinburgh's streets. Will he be able to stop it before someone else succumbs to the hangman's song?

The murder/suicide of a prominent Scottish politician and his family brings Edinburgh-based Detective Inspector Tony McLean out to the countryside to investigate. The powers that be want a quick report and then to have the whole thing buried, but McLean believes there's more to the case than meets the eye. The more lies he uncovers, the more McLean comes to realize there is a connection between the influential politician and another case he's working-the body of a man, stark naked and covered from head to toe in fresh tattoos, found in a river to the south of Edinburgh. But investigating the link between the two could have detrimental implications for his career, not to mention his life. As McLean faces the pressure to wrap up the case, he comes face to face with an ancient evil that will put everyone he cares about at risk in Dead Men's Bones, the fourth installment of James Oswald's internationally bestselling series.

Detective Inspector Tony McLean is on the case when the search for a missing journalist uncovers the scene of a carefully staged murder. In a sealed chamber, deep in the heart of Gilmerton Cove, a mysterious network of caves and passages sprawling beneath Edinburgh, the body is discovered in a seemingly macabre ritual of purification. But McLean knew the dead man and can't shake off the suspicion that there is far more to this case than meets the eye. For one thing, the baffling lack of forensics at the crime scene seems impossible. But that's just the first in a series of revelations about this case that seems beyond belief. Teamed with the most unlikely and unwelcome of allies, McLean must track down a killer-driven by the darkest compulsions and who will answer only to a higher power-until it's his own blood on the altar. Shocking and suspenseful, Prayer for the Dead, the fifth installment in James Oswald's internationally bestselling series, plunges readers into the bone-chilling darkness of an underground world filled with ancient secrets.