It’s a case tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. A
lonely hearts killer is targeting middle-aged women at
some of England’s most well-known pubs—including one torn
down eighty years ago. What’s more, Arthur Bryant happened
to see one of the victims only moments before her death at
the pub that doesn’t exist. Indeed, this case is littered
with clues that defy everything the veteran detectives
know about the habits of serial killers, the methodology
of crime, and the odds of making an arrest. Now, with the
public on the verge of panic and their superiors
determined to shut the PCU down for good, Detectives
Bryant and May must rise to the occasion in defense of two
great English traditions—the pub and the Peculiar Crimes
Unit.That’s easier said than done. A lost funeral
urn, the eighteenth-century mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, the
Knights Templars, the secret history of pubs, and the
discovery of an astounding religious relic may be enough
to convince one of the pair to take back his resignation
letter. But with Bryant consulting a memory specialist and
May encountering a brush with mortality, do the Peculiar
Crimes Unit’s two living legends have enough life left to
stop a murderous conspiracy…and a deadly cupid targeting
one of their own.