Every instinct is screaming at her that something is wrong. ‘Lorraine?’ The door stands open, the kettle cold, the house dark and silent. Behind an overturned chair, she sees a figure on the floor. Rushing forward, a gasp of fear escapes Karen’s chest: her future mother-in-law will never open her eyes again…

DS Karen Hart’s happy world is shattered the moment she finds her fiancé Mike’s mother murdered on what should have been a night of celebration. And even worse, someone has sewn the soft skin around Lorraine’s eyes shut…

Karen’s entire soul aches to uncover Lorraine’s killer. But her team cannot let her be a part of the investigation, and she is forced to watch from the sidelines. Every clue haunts her: the page mysteriously torn from Lorraine’s address book, the whispers about Lorraine’s troubled history. Then another of Mike’s relatives is found dead—eyes sewn shut in the same horrifying way.

Karen is sure the key to this case lies in Mike’s family, but as she gets closer to the truth, the killer’s attention turns to her. Now she must solve this case alone before someone else she loves becomes the next victim—and before the killer closes Karen’s own eyes forever…

This book can be read as a standalone.

Born in Kent, D. S. Butler grew up as an avid reader with a love for crime fiction and mysteries. She has worked as a scientific officer in a hospital pathology laboratory and as a research scientist. After obtaining a PhD in biochemistry, she worked at the University of Oxford for four years before moving to the Middle East. While living in Bahrain, she wrote her first novel and hasn’t stopped writing since. She now lives in Lincolnshire with her husband.