Soho
Published August 12, 2025
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
Shona Sandison is in London at a journalism banquet when a strange man approaches her with a promised scoop. After accepting an award for her bombshell investigation of rising extremism (recounted in 2024’s The Hollow Tree), she goes to the place where the man told her to pick up a package. It turns out to be a dismal sex shop, and she’s not sure what to make of the device he’s left for her, some sort of antiquated cell phone that she can’t turn on. She hopes he’ll explain it all when they meet, as arranged, but instead she finds he’s been gruesomely beaten to death. While she looks at the gory scene, a masked man comes after her with a bloody hammer and she barely escapes with her life.