Ambrose Parry, The Death of Shame

Internationally bestselling and multi-award-winning author, Chris Brookmyre, and consultant anaesthetist, Dr Marisa Haetzman are husband and wife creative duo – Ambrose Parry. Joining us to discuss the fifth and final instalment in their thrilling Raven and Fisher series, The Death of Shame is inspired by the fascinating historical facts Haetzman uncovered through her master’s degree in the History of Medicine.

Friday 27th June, 7.00pm

Venue: Chelmsford Library, County Hall, Market Road, Chelmsford, CM1 1QH

Tickets: £10 / £8 concessions (Students, Under 27s and Unwaged)

Box Office: essexbookfestival.org.uk or Mercury Theatre 01206 573948

The Death of Shame by Ambrose Parry

The fifth and final installment in the thrilling Raven and Fisher series exploring the exploitation of women in the Victorian era.

1854, Edinburgh.
Respectable public faces hide sordid private sins.

Apprentice Sarah Fisher is helping to fund Dr Will Raven’s emerging medical practice in exchange for being secretly trained as a medic, should the rules barring women ever change. Sarah needs no instruction in the inequalities that beset her gender, but even she has her eyes opened to a darker reality when a relative seeks her help in searching for her missing daughter. Annabelle Banks was promised a situation in a prestigious household, but there has been no word from her since she left home, and the agency that arranged her position says she never appeared.

Sarah’s inquiries lead her to reforming campaigners trying to publicise the plight of the hundreds of girls ensnared in Edinburgh’s houses of assignation. Sarah learns how young women are lured, deceived, trafficked and raped, leaving them ruined in the eyes of a society obsessed with moral purity, and where virginity is prized as a lucrative commodity.

Drawing upon real historical events, The Death of Shame takes Raven and Sarah into a treacherous labyrinth of exploitation, corruption, high-level complicity and Victorian-style revenge porn.

Chris Brookmyre and Dr Marisa Haetzman – Ambrose Parry

Photo of Ambros Parry (Chris and Marisa) credit Bob McDevitt

Chris Brookmyre is an internationally bestselling and multi-award-winning author and Dr Marisa Haetzman is a consultant anaesthetist of twenty years’ experience. The Raven and Fisher series is inspired by the fascinating historical facts Haetzman uncovered through her master’s degree in the History of Medicine which she completed in 2014. The couple teamed up to write a series of historical crime thrillers, featuring the darkest of Victorian Edinburgh’s secrets. They are married and live in Scotland.

The Way of All Flesh, The Art of Dying and A Corruption of Blood were shortlisted for the McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Y ear. A Corruption of Blood was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2022. In 2024, Voices of the Dead was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger and their short story A Spendthrift and the Swallow was shortlisted for the CWA Short Dagger Award.