Description
An expert in investigating murders that occurred over the last century, forensic historian Simon Shaw, a University of North Carolina history professor, takes on the case of a young woman, the goddaughter of a friend, who is plagued by dark memories and the belief that in a past life she had committed infanticide. By the author of The Fugitive King.
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Professor Simon Shaw never set out to be a detective. But when a colleague consulted him about an eighty-year-old murder, it spawned an intriguing, if not very profitable, sideline to teaching American history to a classroom peppered with wooden-eared college students. Now Simon is known as "the forensic historian" and beset with - well, offered from time to time - mysteries from long ago.Helen Williams - or rather, her problem - is nothing like any of the puzzles Simon has ever faced. She claims not to believe in reincarnation, but since childhood she has suffered from flashes of a past life. In them she is a turn-of-the-century woman named Annie Evans, living in the city they're in now, Raleigh, North Carolina. Helen has kept notes on her "memories" of Annie Evans's life, including her work in an orphanage and the possible murder of an infant.Simon wants no part of this. What if word gets to his colleagues - or, heaven forbid, his students? He'd be the joke of the campus. But Helen is so genuinely troubled, so desperate for help - and such a charming young woman - and her godfather is, after all, Simon's friend. So, he takes her notes with a promise to read them and see if there's anything he can do.But soon the need to get to the bottom of his puzzle takes over, because he begins to believe Helen is telling the truth - her truth - and that she's not hysterical. Besides, Simon, having broken with his last love, is taken with Helen Williams, regardless of a boyfriend somewhere in the background. What Simon and Helen find is so surprising, and yet so believable, that the reader finishes full of admiration for the way clever Simon has dodged a would-be-killer and solved his toughest case.
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