Taverner has to face his greatest challenge yet - a serious danger from the East threatens not just his life, but everyone he loves! All aboard this adventurous historical mystery set in the early seventeenth century.

March, 1605. Country doctor and former ship's surgeon Gabriel Taverner has embarked on his next adventure. Since discovering that the debilitating injury he sustained years ago has lost its power to induce chronic seasickness, he has been impatient to leave Devon once more, and now it is in the service of Walter Haverleigh, a wealthy and successful merchant, who has engaged Gabriel to tend the crew of the Luipaard on her voyage to the Eastern seas.

As the months and years of Gabriel's absence continue, his family and friends are struggling with the replacement physician he engaged before his hasty departure. Doctor Maudsley Cheverell has turned out to be incompetent, arrogant and self-serving. When one morning his dead body is found in a ditch, it seems that nobody will mourn him or regret his untimely death.

However, when the body is examined, it is apparent that Cheverell was tortured by the application of a specific method from the East . . . Is there a connection to Gabriel and his time in Asia? And where is Gabriel? Why has the quiet peace of England's Tavy Valley been disrupted by a sinister plot and, most crucially, will everyone come out of it alive?

The last instalment in the Gabriel Taverner mysteries is perfect for fans of C.J. Sansom, S.J. Parris and Robert Harris. A grand finale and "a must for historical mystery readers" (Booklist).