DS Liam Kilshaw

For DS Liam Kilshaw, a former marine who almost died on a mission gone wrong, returning to the sea was meant to help combat his PTSD. But when he’s called out with the lifeboat crew off the rugged Cornish coast at night, the dark danger of the waves comes crashing back. The body of a young man is floating in the water, and the zip-tie marks on his wrists show this is no tragic drowning—it’s murder.

When a mutilated body washes up on Sennen Beach, DS Liam Kilshaw is plunged into a case as dark and unforgiving as the Cornish winter. With the victim’s face so severely disfigured that identification is impossible, whispers of a local superstition begin to surface—the killing bears a chilling resemblance to the legend of Bucca Dhu, a vengeful sea demon said to demand human sacrifice.

When the body of a teenage girl is found posed in the Merry Maidens stone circle, her face coated in clay and ochre, DS Liam Kilshaw is drawn into a case where near-forgotten fictions bleed into brutal fact. With echoes of an old folktale of dancers turned to stone, the scene is more about staging than superstition. And when two skeletons are unearthed beneath a nearby stone, Kilshaw realises the past is far from dead and buried.