On a snowy February morning, London art dealer Rachel Tenison goes for a jog through a dark and deserted Holland Park. Still giddy from the previous evening, her legs wobbly from too much drink and too little sleep, she trips and falls at the bottom of an icy hill. Lying on her back, enjoying the sensation of snowflakes melting on her skin, she savors the unexpected stillness of the moment. But then there's a sharp crack of a tree branch close behind her, followed by a voice, softly calling her name. Two days later, when Rachel's naked, frozen body is discovered in the park, bound and arranged in a strangely symbolic manner, Detectives Mark Tartaglia and Sam Donovan are assigned the case. Still haunted by the Bridegroom, a chillingly seductive serial killer with a penchant for lonely girls and deadly heights, Tartaglia and Donovan are forced to put the past behind them as they try to uncover the identity of Rachel's murderer. As they begin their investigation, however, they find that as much mystery surrounds Rachel's life as it does her death. And when a tip from a journalist draws their attention to similarities between this murder and an unsolved crime committed the year before, the web becomes more tangled than ever... Picking up where Forbes' critically-acclaimed first novel, 'Die with Me', left off, 'Our Lady of Pain' takes readers back to the chilly neighborhoods of west London, and draws them back into the familiar folds of the Barnes Murder Squad.
