The Death of Shame

Author: Ambrose Parry

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945) | Crime & mystery | Historical fiction

Published on 5^th June 2025 by Canongate Books in the United Kingdom as part of the 'A Raven and Fisher Mystery' series.

Hardback | 432 pages
240mm x 159mm | 500g

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.