John Frederick Freeman was an English poet and essayist, who gave up a successful career in insurance to write full-time. He was born in London and started as an office boy aged 13. He was a close friend of Walter de la Mare from 1907, who lobbied hard with Edward Marsh to get Freeman into the Georgian Poetry series; with eventual success. De la Mare's biographer Theresa Whistler describes him as "tall, gangling, ugly, solemn, punctilious".

In the quaint Scottish town of Ettrick, a sinister secret lurks beneath the surface. When a young woman is found brutally murdered, the community is thrown into chaos. As suspicion falls upon the enigmatic stranger, Thomas Boston, the town's esteemed minister, finds himself drawn into a web of deceit and danger. With his keen intellect and unwavering faith, Boston embarks on a perilous quest to uncover the truth. But as he delves deeper into the investigation, he discovers that the killer'...