The author of The Blood Detective - Dan Waddell is a journalist who has published ten non-fiction books, including Who Do You Think You Are? - tied in with the BBC TV series (which we've become quite firm fans of).
Dodging the prologue:
"Detective Chief Inspector Grant Foster, stiff from lack of sleep, dragged his tall, weary frame from his brand-new Toyota Corolla, feeling the familiar ache of being hauled from his bed in the middle of the night. Even though he had stopped smoking six months ago he felt a pang for nicotine. Arriving at a murder scene had been one of those occasions when he would habitually spark up; part of a ritual, a summoning of will. He cracked his knuckles and sniffed the cold air."
It's not the best start to DCI Grant Foster's day: standing over a mutilated body in a windswept London churchyard. Although the killer has left a cryptic and brutal clue.
It is only when 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.