The Glass Meridian

When the reclusive cartographer who taught August Mercer everything dies alone in his salt-stained shop, the official verdict is unsuspicious. August knows better. Tucked among the mildewed folios is a final letter addressed to him and a half-drawn map leading nowhere, a map whose central meridian has been deliberately left unfinished. Whoever finished it first would vanish, and someone is already trying. DCI Rosalind Pryce arrives to close the file quietly, but the coastal town refuses to cooperate. Vivienne Holt, the dead man's widow, smiles too easily. Theo Caldwell, a wealthy collector, circles the shop's remaining stock with hungry eyes. Mrs. Cressida Vane, the sharp-tongued neighbor who knew the cartographer for decades, hints at secrets she will not name. August's sister Imogen arrives insisting he walk away; his old friend Silas Blackwood warns him not to trust the police; and two strangers, Edwin Marsh and Bertrand Hale, will stop at nothing to possess the incomplete chart. As the autumn fog rolls in and bodies begin to surface along the shoreline, August realizes the map does not point to treasure. It points to a truth someone has spent thirty years erasing, and finishing it may be the only way to survive. To trace the meridian is to expose a killer. To abandon it is to become the next loose end.