The Perfumer's Ghost Note

Every scent tells a story. Some are engineered to kill.

To anyone else, the rain-slicked Georgian streets of Bath smell of damp limestone and woodsmoke. To Genevieve Chen-a former St Bartholomew's palliative care specialist with eidetic olfactory synesthesia-every volatile molecule flares across her vision in living color and geometry. Warm cedar anchors her nerves; synthetic chemicals slice through the air like neon-green razor wire.

Summoned to the historic Theatre Royal on a stormy October evening to deliver a soothing vocal tincture, Genevieve arrives backstage just before the second act of Tosca-only to find world-renowned soprano Vivienne Vane dead behind a bolted oak dressing-room door. Hovering above the diva's cooling skin is an impossible, freezing accord of cold-pressed Italian bergamot, wild Parma violet, and a lethal synthetic carrier that cleaves at human body temperature. Worse still, hidden in the shadow of the skirting board lies an empty lead-crystal flacon stamped in dark red wax with a mark Genevieve knows all too well: HB XIX-the private seal of her late mentor, reclusive master perfumer Hector Bell.

With military toxicologists at Porton Down hours away from tracing the wax seal straight to her subterranean workshop on Margaret's Buildings, Genevieve has forty-eight hours to clear her mentor's name-and her own. Teaming up with Detective Inspector Giles Sterling, a sharp-eyed, chronically congested CID copper, along with formidable neighborhood baker Agnes Mallow and Patchouli, a fiercely loyal three-legged calico cat with an uncanny nose for trouble, Genevieve follows a thirty-year-old trail of stolen formulas from the sunken lightwells and ancient Roman thermal conduits of Bath to the high-security vaults of Mayfair.

Because the poison that silenced England's greatest voice was only a field test-and the final performance is about to begin.

What you'll find inside The Perfumer's Ghost Note:

• A Richly Atmospheric British Setting: Explore the candlelit cellars of Margaret's Buildings, the fly-galleries of the Theatre Royal, and the steaming Roman drains beneath Bath.
• Botanical Alchemy Meets Forensic Suspense: A sharp, grounded heroine who reads crime scenes through scent, chemistry, and clinical observation.
• An Unforgettable Cast: A grumpy-yet-steadfast Somerset detective, a no-nonsense artisanal baker, and a three-legged calico cat who refuses to back down.

Perfect for fans of Elly Griffiths, Laurie R. King, and atmospheric British mysteries where ancient craft collides with modern intrigue.