The Death of Shame

Raven, Fisher, and Simpson, Book 5

By: Ambrose Parry

Narrated by: Bryan Dick, Cathleen McCarron

1854, Edinburgh.
Respectable faces hide private sins.

Apprentice Sarah Fisher is helping to fund Dr Will Raven’s emerging medical practice in exchange for being secretly trained as a medic, should the rules barring women ever change. Sarah needs no instruction in the inequalities that beset her gender, but even she has her eyes opened to a darker reality when a relative seeks her help in searching for her missing daughter. Annabel Banks was promised a situation in a prestigious household, but there has been no word from her since she left home, and the agency that arranged her position says she never appeared.

Sarah’s inquiries lead her to reforming campaigners trying to publicise the plight of the hundreds of girls ensnared in Edinburgh’s houses of assignation. Sarah learns how young women are lured, deceived, trafficked and raped, leaving them ruined in the eyes of a society obsessed with moral purity, and where virginity is prized as a lucrative commodity.

Drawing upon real historical events, The Death of Shame takes Raven and Sarah into a treacherous labyrinth of exploitation, corruption, and immorality.©2025 Ambrose Parry (P)2025 Canongate Books

Critic reviews

'Praise for the series: Parry's Victorian Edinburgh comes vividly alive - and it's a world of pain' (VAL McDERMID)

'Brilliantly conceived, fiendishly plotted and immaculately realised, these thrillers pull off the most difficult double-whammy of all: beneath blood and butchery so real they almost stain the pages lie both heart and soul . . . Wherever Parry takes them, I'll follow' (MICK HERRON)

'A rip-roaring tale of murder amid the medical experiments of 19th-century Edinburgh. The book brings both city and period to colourful life and is a joy to read' (IAN RANKIN)

'Menacing, witty and ingeniously plotted, Ambrose Parry's debut draws you into the dark heart of nineteenth-century Edinburgh and won't let you go until the final page' (S.J. PARRIS)

'The dark and dangerous past is brought thrillingly to life. I can't wait to read more of Raven and Sarah' (MARK BILLINGHAM)