Ambrose Parry – BooksPlease

The Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry

Published on August 10, 2025 by Margaret6 Comments

Description:

1854, Edinburgh.
Respectable public faces hide sordid 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. Annabelle 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, high-level complicity and Victorian-style revenge porn.

Ambrose Parry is the pseudonym of crime fiction author, Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, a consultant anaesthetist. The combination of a crime fiction writer and an anaesthetist works excellently in Ambrose Parry’s novels. The research into the history of medicine is extensive, making this book a combination of historical fact and fiction, a tale of murder and medical matters, with the social scene, historical and medical facts slotting perfectly into an intricate murder mystery.

The Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry is the 5th and final Raven and Fisher book. Dr Will Raven is no longer working with Dr Simpson (a real historical person, renowned for his discovery of chloroform) but is setting up his own medical practice with the financial assistance of Sarah Fisher. Sarah, who began working as a housemaid for Dr Simpson, then as a nurse, has ambitions to train as a doctor, something rarely possible for women in her position. So secretly Will is training her as his apprentice to become a doctor.

It’s set in 1854, when Will and his wife, Eugenie have two children, as she is struggling to bond with her children suffering from postnatal depression. The book begins with the death of her father, himself an eminent doctor with a wealthy practice. It appears he committed suicide but Eugenie can’t accept that and asks Will to investigate. Meanwhile Sarah has also been asked to investigate the disappearance of her young niece who has disappeared after leaving home to start a job in Edinburgh.

The plot is complicated and although you could read this as a standalone book as there is some background to what has happened in the earlier books, I really think it’s better to have read them – and they are well worth reading. Will and Sarah’s separate investigations take them into dark and desperate places dealing with blackmail, murder, suicide, abortion, rape, female exploitation, and prostitution. The position of women and girls in society and the dangers they faced are centre stage.

I always enjoy reading the Historical Notes at the end of the Raven and Fisher books and this one is no exception. It gives the factual background and sources that Ambrose Parry used and information about the real life people who are included in the book as well as Dr Simpson, such as Henry Littlejohn, Edinburgh’s police surgeon who served as Medical Officer for Health and medical advisor to the Crown, and Emily Blackwell, one of the pioneers of women in medicine.

This is a great ending to the series but I’d like to think this is not the end of their stories – I’d love to read more about them! In the meantime there is a short story, The Apple Falls Not Far by Ambrose Parry, a digital exclusive short story from the world of Raven and Fisher to read – more about that in a later post.

Stacking the Shelves: 12 April 2025

Published on April 12, 2025 by Margaret4 Comments

It’s Saturday and time for Stacking the Shelves, hosted by Marlene at Reading Reality and the details are on her blog, as well as a huge amount of book reviews. Why not visit her blog if you haven’t already found it? The gorgeous graphic is also used courtesy of the site.

The idea is to share the books you are adding to your shelves, may they be physical or virtual. This means you can include books you buy in physical stores or online, books you borrow from friends or the library, review books, gifts and of course e-books!

These are e-books I’ve either bought or acquired for free this month:

Underland: A Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane, a 99p offer.

In Underland, Robert Macfarlane takes us on a journey into the worlds beneath our feet. From the ice-blue depths of Greenland’s glaciers, to the underground networks by which trees communicate, from Bronze Age burial chambers to the rock art of remote Arctic sea-caves, this is a deep-time voyage into the planet’s past and future. Global in its geography, gripping in its voice and haunting in its implications, Underland is a work of huge range and power, and a remarkable new chapter in Macfarlane’s long-term exploration of landscape and the human heart.

The One That Got Away by Mike Gayle.This was free – a bonus short story from Amazon Prime this month.

Reuben thought he’d spend the rest of his life with Beth, until she broke his heart six months ago. He’s not even remotely over her, so he’s devastated to hear she’s getting married—this weekend. Now he’s faced with the ultimate question: what should he do on the day of the wedding? Grieve? Disrupt the ceremony? Or do everything in his power to pretend it’s not happening? Enlisting the help of his friends, Reuben is all set to mark the occasion with distraction on a grand scale: Ferraris, champagne, and a VIP box at the races. But on the morning of the Big Day, Reuben gets a phone call that not only derails his elaborate itinerary: it may well change his life completely…

The Boy from Tiger Bay: A True Story of Murder, Betrayal, and a Fight for Justice by Ceri Jackson. A free book from Amazon Prime this month.

A brutal murder. A blighted investigation. The true story of five men damned by a crime they didn’t commit.

On Valentine’s Day 1988, twenty-year-old Lynette White was brutally murdered in a dark corner of Cardiff’s world-famous, and infamous, Tiger Bay. Stigmatised by a bad reputation, the area was on the brink of major redevelopment which would change the historic community forever.

South Wales Police launched its biggest murder hunt to date, and within weeks detectives released a photofit of a prime suspect seen outside the murder scene, his hands covered in blood. A white man. But as the months passed by and no arrest was made, the police came under inevitable pressure.

Everyone knew John Actie. But he didn’t know Lynette White. Yet, almost a year after her death, he and four other innocent men were charged with killing her. None matched the description, and none were white. But they became the scapegoats in what some saw as a desperate attempt to close the case.

Told predominantly through John Actie’s eyes, The Boy from Tiger Bay is an explosive true-crime narrative that exposes one of the UK’s most infamous murder investigations—a story of racial injustice and the enduring fight to bring the truth to light.

I’ve received one ARC this week from NetGalley

The Death of Shame (A Raven and Fisher Mystery Book 5) by Ambrose Parry, publication date, 5 June 2025.

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.

A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry

Published on September 22, 2021 by Margaret2 Comments

Canongate Books| 19th August 2021| 405 pages| Review Copy| 5*

This is the third book in Ambrose Parry’s historical series starring Will Raven & Sarah Fisher, set in 19th century Edinburgh. I loved the other books, The Way of All Flesh and The Art of Dying and A Corruption of Blood is equally as good, if not better.

Description

Edinburgh. This city will bleed you dry.

Dr Will Raven is a man seldom shocked by human remains, but even he is disturbed by the contents of a package washed up at the Port of Leith. Stranger still, a man Raven has long detested is pleading for his help to escape the hangman.

Back at 52 Queen Street, Sarah Fisher has set her sights on learning to practise medicine. Almost everyone seems intent on dissuading her from this ambition, but when word reaches her that a woman has recently obtained a medical degree despite her gender, Sarah decides to seek her out.

Raven’s efforts to prove his erstwhile adversary’s innocence are failing and he desperately needs Sarah’s help. Putting their feelings for one another aside, their investigations will take them to both extremes of Edinburgh’s social divide, where they discover that wealth and status cannot alter a fate written in the blood.

Ambrose Parry is the pseudonym of crime fiction author, Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, a consultant anaesthetist. Will is a doctor working with Doctor James Young Simpson, a professor of midwifery, who discovered the anaesthetic properties of chloroform (a real historical character), and Sarah, is the Simpsons’ housemaid, but she now assists Professor Simpson and is studying medicine. The two of them have a complicated and somewhat spiky relationship, which continues in this novel.

The combination of a crime fiction writer and an anaesthetist works excellently in Ambrose Parry’s novels. The research into the history of medicine is extensive, making this book a combination of historical fact and fiction, a tale of murder and medical matters, with the social scene, historical and medical facts slotting perfectly into an intricate murder mystery.

The mystery begins when the body of a baby wrapped in a parcel, is found floating in the Forth. The child had been strangled with a length of white tape. Sarah meanwhile is involved in finding a missing child. When Sir Ainsley Douglas, a prominent and wealthy member of Edinburgh society is found dead from arsenic poisoning, Will reluctantly gets involved in the murder investigation. How the mysteries interlink gradually becomes clear and although I soon realised how Sir Ainsley had been murdered, I was puzzled about who did it and was completely taken by surprise when the culprit was revealed.

Like all good historical fiction, this book weaves together fact and fiction. The Historical Note at the end of the book sorts out what was real and what was invented. The subjects covered include details about infectious diseases, the difficulties women experienced in obtaining a medical degree, and crimes children suffered in the 19th century. I think A Corruption of Blood is an exceptionally excellent murder mystery and an informative historical novel, with great period detail and convincing characters. I look forward to reading more books by Ambrose Parry.

A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry

Published on June 9, 2021 by Margaret4 Comments

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Wishful Endings, to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about that we have yet to read. Generally they’re books that have yet to be released.

This week I’m featuring A Corruption of Blood by Ambrose Parry, release 19 August 2021. It’s the third in the Will Raven & Sarah Fisher series, following from the McIlvanney prize-shortlisted The Way of All Flesh and The Art of Dying , both of which I thoroughly enjoyed. So, I’m keen to read this one.

Description

Edinburgh. This city will bleed you dry.

Dr Will Raven is a man seldom shocked by human remains, but even he is disturbed by the contents of a package washed up at the Port of Leith. Stranger still, a man Raven has long detested is pleading for his help to escape the hangman.

Back at 52 Queen Street, Sarah Fisher has set her sights on learning to practise medicine. Almost everyone seems intent on dissuading her from this ambition, but when word reaches her that a woman has recently obtained a medical degree despite her gender, Sarah decides to seek her out.

Raven’s efforts to prove his erstwhile adversary’s innocence are failing and he desperately needs Sarah’s help. Putting their feelings for one another aside, their investigations will take them to both extremes of Edinburgh’s social divide, where they discover that wealth and status cannot alter a fate written in the blood.

What upcoming release are you eagerly anticipating?

The Art of Dying by Ambrose Parry

Published on August 22, 2019August 22, 2019 by Margaret6 Comments

Last year one of my favourite books was The Way of all Flesh by Ambrose Parry (the pseudonym of crime fiction author, Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman, a consultant anaesthetist). The Art of Dying is its sequel, continuing the story of Will Raven and Sarah Fisher. Once more this is a combination of historical fact and fiction; the social scene, historical and medical facts slotting perfectly into an intricate murder mystery. Beginning in Berlin in 1849 with a dramatic scene, as Will Raven is attacked by three masked men, it is mainly set in 1850 in Edinburgh, when a mysterious illness baffles doctors, who are unable to identify the disease, let alone cure their patients.

Will Raven, now a qualified doctor has returned from studying in Europe to take up the post of assistant to Dr James Simpson, who was Professor of Midwifery at Edinburgh University. Still in love with Sarah, he yearns to be re-united with her, but Will is dismayed to find that she had married during his absence. She was formerly Dr Simpson’s housemaid. Now she is an unqualified nurse, helping with Dr Simpson’s patients in the clinic he runs from his house. But when Dr Simpson is blamed for the death of a patient in suspicious circumstances, Sarah and Will join forces to clear his name. In doing so they uncover more unexplained deaths. Will thinks he may have discovered a new illness when he finds that four members of the same family in a wealthy area of the city have died within two weeks.

Sarah’s has her own problems as she is keen to be more than Dr Simpson’s assistant, but is hampered by the limited choices that women had, and she battles for more equality. There is so much packed into this novel. As well as a feminist theme with its strong female characters, it focuses on medical advances and practices, including the use of chloroform and the ethics and the dilemmas that presented. It also highlights the differences between the affluent professional classes and the poor working class. And it is an intriguing medical murder mystery, with several sub-plots and a wide cast of characters.

I really liked the setting, giving a great sense of place and full of atmosphere that adds to the tension and suspense of the murder mystery. I also liked the way the narrative is interrupted by short passages in the first person giving glimpses into the mind of a murderer – based on a real 19th century figure – and gradually the identity of this person becomes apparent. The Art of Dying is a well written and complex novel with credible characters, some based on real historical people and using nineteenth century textbooks reflecting the medical thinking of the period.

I loved The Art of Dying and I’m hoping there will be a third book as I really want to know what happens next to Will and Sarah. Although I think it is perfectly possible to read this as a standalone novel, I recommend reading The Way of All Flesh, focusing on Dr Simpson’s discovery of the anaesthetic properties of chloroform, before reading The Art of Dying.

A Note From the Publisher

Ambrose Parry is a pseudonym for a collaboration between Chris Brookmyre and Marisa Haetzman. The couple are married and live in Scotland. Chris Brookmyre is the international bestselling and multi-award-winning author of over twenty novels, including Black Widow, winner of both the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year and the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Novel of the Year. Dr Marisa Haetzman is a consultant anaesthetist of twenty years’ experience, whose research for her Master’s in the History of Medicine uncovered the material upon which this novel was based.

Many thanks to Canongate Books for an e-book review copy via NetGalley.

The Way of All Flesh by Ambrose Parry

Published on September 2, 2018 by Margaret7 Comments

Edinburgh, 1847. City of Medicine, Money, Murder

Canongate Books|30 August 2018|417 pages|Review copy|5*

The Way of All Flesh is the debut novel from Ambrose Parry: co-written by best-selling crime writer Chris Brookmyre and consultant anaesthetist Dr Marisa Haetzman.

I knew as soon as I began reading The Way of All Flesh that I was going to enjoy it – it’s historical crime fiction at its very best.

Full of atmosphere and historical detail, I could easily believe I was there in Edinburgh in 1847 as Dr James Young Simpson, a professor of midwifery, discovered the anaesthetic properties of chloroform. It combines fact and fiction most successfully, the social scene, historical and medical facts slotting perfectly into the plot.

It begins with the death of Evie, a prostitute in Edinburgh’s Old Town, found by Will Raven, a young medical student about to start his apprenticeship with Dr Simpson. Will, Evie’s friend is suspicious, the place was reeking of drink and Evie’s body was in a state of contortion. He flees the scene, not wanting to be implicated in her death. There is a mystery surrounding Will – he has a past that he wants to conceal, and he is in trouble with a couple of villains who beat him, slashing his face when he is unable to repay his debt to a moneylender.

Will is anxious to fit in with the more genteel society of the New Town, where Dr Simpson has his surgery, a place where people from all levels of society congregated – the poor who attended his clinics, the wealthy who also wanted treatment, and the medical students and colleagues experimenting with new drugs and medical techniques. When Will comes across similar deaths during his work with Dr Simpson he is determined to find out who is responsible – was it the same person who had killed Evie?

Sarah, Dr Simpson’s housemaid is an ambitious and enterprising young woman who would love to have a career in medicine just like the male medical students. Initially she dislikes Will, but eventually they join forces to uncover the killer in the depths of Edinburgh’s dark underworld . Through Sarah’s eyes we see the frustrations and limitations that all women experienced and through Will’s eyes we see the grim realities and danger that women at all levels of society faced with childbirth and unwanted pregnancies, and the brutally primitive state of the medicine of the period. The medical scenes are indeed gruesome and the attitudes of some of the clergy with their opposition to the use of anaesthetics is deplorable. The authors have combined their specialities to provide a compelling murder mystery interwoven with the exciting discovery of chloroform and how it transformed surgery.

This is without doubt an impressive and well written book that gripped me throughout – definitely one of the best books that I’ve read so far this year.

And I am so pleased that this is not the end of Will as Chris and his wife, Marisa are planning more novels revealing the development of medicine and the part that the Simpson household played. Also, I see that Benedict Cumberbatch’s SunnyMarch production company has secured the TV rights to The Way of All Flesh.

Thank you to Canongate Books and NetGalley for my copy of this book for review.