A Dead Man's Diary

England, 1894.

Alistair Vane has made a profession of explaining the inexplicable.

Murderers may lie. Witnesses may err. Evidence may be contrived. Yet Vane maintains that no crime, however ingenious, can withstand reason indefinitely.

Then he encounters a dead man who appears determined to prove him wrong.

Inside the locked study of a murdered recluse, Vane discovers a battered diary amongst the dead man's possessions. Its earliest pages contain little of consequence-private observations, peculiar names, fragments of seemingly idle thought.

Its final pages are considerably more troubling.

They are dated after the author's death.

Within them are accounts of murders that have not yet occurred.

Vane dismisses the writings as an elaborate deception-until one of the predicted deaths comes to pass exactly as described.

Then another follows.

And another.

Each entry offers only fragments: a time, a place, an object of apparent insignificance. Never enough to prevent the crime outright, but enough for Vane to pursue the truth through locked chambers, manufactured alibis, contradictory testimonies, clandestine societies, and murderers who have taken considerable pains to leave reason itself without an answer.

Yet with every case, one circumstance becomes increasingly difficult to dismiss.

The diary does not merely anticipate murder.

It anticipates Alistair Vane.

His questions.

His deductions.

Even his mistakes.

Someone knew precisely how he would investigate crimes that had not yet been committed.

And that someone is dead.

Or so the evidence would have him believe.