The Cartographer of Broken Promises

THE CARTOGRAPHER OF BROKEN PROMISES

A map. A dead woman. A city that built its future on lies.

When the body of Eleanor Marsh is pulled from the water meadows below Harwick Weir, Detective Inspector Nora Vane notices one detail that doesn't fit: one shoe. It's a small thing. But small things, in Nora's experience, are the ones that matter most.

Inside the missing shoe is a hand-drawn map — partially destroyed by the river, but not entirely. And on Eleanor's hidden phone is the photograph she took before she hid it: a precise, intelligent record of something terrible, left by a woman who knew she might not survive long enough to deliver it in person.

Eleanor Marsh had no badge, no institution, no protection. She was a woman the system had long since stopped paying attention to. But she had been paying attention — to a decade of corruption woven through the bones of Harwick's celebrated renaissance, to a network of property fraud and human trafficking operating in plain sight, and to the man inside the police force who was keeping it all safe from scrutiny.

She documented everything. She drew the map. She hid the phone.

Now it's Nora's turn to finish what Eleanor started.

Set in the post-industrial north of England, The Cartographer of Broken Promises is a taut, compassionate crime novel about the women who keep the truth alive when the systems designed to protect it have been turned against them — and about the specific, dangerous courage of people who act for the right reasons with no guarantee of survival.

"If you're going to write something down, write it so someone else can read it."

Perfect for fans of Tana French, Kate Atkinson, and Peter May.

~26,000 words · Crime Fiction · Literary Thriller