Uncover the deadly secrets hidden behind impenetrable walls in A Carol for the Dead, the first Illaun Bowe crime thriller by bestselling master of Irish crime fiction Patrick DunneDecember 16, dead midwinter. A light dusting of snow is falling over Newgrange, an innocent white to cover the dark soil. A small group is huddled around a shallow grave, dug out of the earth, one of them reaching out to touch what lies inside ...When an ancient female body is discovered in a peat bog close to the megalithic tomb of Newgrange, archaeologist Illaun Bowe hopes it is the career-boosting find she's been searching for. But the body she finds is like none she's encountered before – its eyes have been gouged out, its throat slashed and there is a sprinkling of holly berries in the earth beside it. Who could have subjected it to such a grotesque and violent end?Hoping the brutalised body will provide much-needed scientific data on the rituals of the...

A gruesome summer crimewave in the Boyne Valley complete with ritual murders and a mysterious plague-bringing Madonna – intrepid archaeologist Illaun Bowe is back in Irish king of crime Patrick Dunne's spine-tingling The Lazarus Bell! 'It's not what you think,' he rasped, his tongue dry and clicking inside his mouth. A look of fear had invaded his eyes. I came as close as I dared. His voice dropped to a barely detectable whisper. 'It's worse ... far worse.'A beautiful carved wooden Madonna, sealed tightly into a lead coffin, is discovered in a plague graveyard in the sleepy village of Castleboyne in Ireland – a fascinating but routine call-out for archaeologist Illaun Bowe.That is, until they take the coffin out of the ground and a black liquid oozes out from the casing, accidentally spilling over one of the workers. Within 24 hours, his skin breaks out in pus-filled lesions, and his organs fail, one by one ...Soon hysteria...