Hare seems to be the prime suspect, but as the body count rises Gillespie realises he may be the only man able to help him track down the killers.

Hare insists he’s escaped his blood-soaked past, but Boston detective Alexander Gillespie isn’t so sure, especially when bodies start turning up who’ve been killed by the same method used by Burke and Hare in Edinburgh. “Can a serial killer ever find redemption? Peter Ranscombe follows Edinburgh murderer William Hare to the civil war-torn United States in the years after his evidence condemned his notorious accomplice William Burke to hang. 'synopsis' may belong to another edition of this title. Against the backdrop of the American Civil War, their search leads them closer to the killer and into the heart of a desperate plot that could threaten the very future of the United States itself. From the oak-panelled studies of Massachusetts's universities to the grimy underworld of the city's docks, Gillespie and Hare must pursue a shadowy villain before he strikes again. But as the slayings continue, Gillespie must turn Hare lose and use the mind of one killer to catch another. When Hare is found working as a labourer on Boston's latest canal-building project, Captain Alexander Gillespie believes he has his man, the same murderer he chased through the streets of Edinburgh during his first year with the police. Thirty-four years later, a series of murders in Boston terrifies the public and thrusts the city's police force into a desperate search for the killer.

Fleeing from a potential lynching in the Scottish capital, Hare headed for London, where rumours spread of his death in a lime pit at the hands of an angry mob. When William Burke was hanged in Edinburgh for mass murder in 1829, his accomplice, William Hare, was set free after turning king's evidence against his partner-in-crime.

Hare by Peter Ranscombe