A promise printed in ink can still leave a village in the lurch.
Clara Bennett is asked to help residents of Hawthorn Row discover what the council has actually decided about their homes. The campaign has carried a more comforting promise through the village, but the official record tells a different story. At the press, printer Alice knows how easily words can be set, altered and passed along—and how much the work costs the people asked to do it.
Then Alice is murdered, and the press becomes part of a dangerous enquiry. Julian Ashcombe joins Clara as she traces the campaign papers, the shop's records and the people who handled them. Each impression can establish something; none can answer every question. Clara must separate what was printed from what was authorised, and what a witness remembers from what the evidence supports.
As suspicion tightens around the press and its workers, the residents still need an answer about their homes. Finding the killer will mean refusing to let a convenient story speak for them again.
