Penguin Books Ltd 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 SundayPeter 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.