Shortlisted for the John Creasey (New Blood) Dagger 2009.
CWA Judges’ comments: ‘The Blood Detective exploits the current interest in genealogy in an amusing and bloody way. Nigel, a floppy haired and engaging anorak, is engaged to assist DI Fuller in the hunt for a serial killer who appears to be punishing the descendants of a group of people who did an ancestor of his a great wrong in Victorian times. Both Fuller and Nigel are well developed characters with interesting personalities and a wealth of expertise which they learn to share. Scenes at the records offices and the people who haunt them are unforgettable.’
As dawn breaks over London, the body of a young man is discovered in a windswept Notting Hill churchyard. The killer has left Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster and his team a grisly, cryptic clue...However, it's not until the clue is handed to Nigel Barnes, a specialist in compiling family trees, that the full message becomes spine-chillingly clear. For, it leads Barnes back more than one hundred years - to the victim of a demented Victorian serial killer...When a second body is discovered Foster needs Barnes's skills more than ever. Because the murderer's clues appear to run along the tangled bloodlines that lie between 1879 and now. And if Barnes is right about his blood-history, the killing spree has only just begun...From the author of the bestselling Who Do You Think You Are? comes a haunting crime novel of blood-stained family histories and gruesome secrets...
Dan Waddell is a journalist and author who lives in west London. He has published ten non-fiction books, including the bestselling Who Do You Think You Are?, which tied in with the successful BBC TV series. The Blood Detective is his first novel.
