The Shadow Step

"Readers rejoice! A captivating new series from Mark Billingham--the very best in the business."--Richard Osman, #1 bestselling author of The Thursday Murder Club Detective Miller is back and investigating his most perplexing case yet The Shadow Step: One taken simultaneously by a pair of dancers facing the same direction, one of them behind and slightly shifted leftwards ("in the shadow") A perfectly executed shadow step demonstrates synchronized elegance. It showcases a couple in near telepathic harmony with one another. It does not normally end with someone stone-dead in a lake. DS Declan Miller is a magnet for strange cases, but an innocent man confessing to the crime? That's a first. Things rapidly escalate when the murder that isn't really a murder attracts the unwanted attention of a drug Queenpin, a deranged ex-squaddie, and a lovesick gangland enforcer. And when a real murder follows - and a student is kidnapped - all evidence points back to the same innocent man. Throw in a wobbly dog, a pair of ceramic leopards, and the distracting smell from a biscuit factory, and Miller's only option to save a young man's life is to waltz all the way into the shadows.

Mark Billingham has twice won the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award, the Sherlock Award for the best detective created by a British writer, and in 2026, he was awarded the Crime Writers' Association Diamond Dagger for an outstanding lifetime contribution to the genre. His books, which include the critically acclaimed Tom Thorne series, have been translated into twenty-five languages and have sold more than six million copies. He lives in London.