Malden, Essex, 1969 – two young policemen and a WPC listen intently as a seven-year-old girl calmly tells them why she just killed her father. Thirty years later, an old woman is discovered murdered in her flat, hideously daubed with cheap make-up. Police are baffled, searching for a motive to give any kind of clue as to the killer. The appearance of a second body, days later, sends the press into a frenzy, demanding answers to the gruesome mystery of the Christmas killer. It takes the combined talents of all three original officers to delve deeply into their own pasts and insecurities to solve the killings – a journey fraught with uncomfortable emotional discoveries and hidden secrets. It is only by unravelling the half-truths and deceptions of the past that a deranged killers twisted intentions can be halted in the future. Phil Loveseys chilling novel combines all the excitement of a murder mystery with a depth of psychological insight into the areas of child manipulation and psychopathy that will fascinate and haunt the reader. Death Duties marks the debut of a remarkable new talent.