Hawksmoor

'There is no Light without Darknesse

and no Substance without Shaddowe'

So proclaims Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment. But Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each church - to create a forbidding architecture that will survive for eternity. Two hundred and fifty years later, London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches - crimes that make no sense to the modern mind . . .

'Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed' Independent on Sunday

Peter Ackroyd was born in London in 1949. A novelist, biographer and historian, he has been the literary editor of The Spectator and chief book reviewer for the The Times, as well as writing several highly acclaimed books including a biography of Dickens and London: The Biography. He lives in London.

Review: Chillingly brilliant . . . sinister and stunningly well executed * Independent on Sunday *

Extraordinary, amazing, vivid, convincing. [Ackroyd's] view of life questions the role not just of the novel but of art and history, memory, time and much else * Financial Times *

A novel remarkable for [its] power, ingenuity and subtlety * London Review of Books *

Prizes: Winner of Whitbread Book Awards: Novel Category 1985.