The Mouthless Dead

Anthony Quinn has found an ingenious way of shaping the story into a gripping work of fiction… a compelling mixture of crime story and character study * Sunday Times *A voyage of discovery… this superior whodunnit becomes a danse macabre as the terrible truth is gradually revealed * The Times *Anthony Quinn is one of our most underrated novelists, so I’m always happy to sing his praises. Initially, The Mouthless Dead is a fictional account of the infamous unsolved murder of housewife Julia Wallace in Liverpool in 1931. But then the story and its narrator takes a series of unexpected turns until its final, chilling paragraph. I was gripped * Red Magazine *A dark, unsettling, completely addictive mystery, which draws you in with all the momentum and all the loving attention to period detail that we’ve come to expect from Anthony Quinn * Jonathan Coe *A beguiling real-life crime thriller and an elegiac meditation on murder, marriage and loneliness * Chris Brookmyre *This absorbing account of one of the most famous unsolved British murder cases creates a fascinating narrative about what really happened. The Mouthless Dead is as engrossing as it is unsettling * Emma Flint, author of Little Deaths *Intensely readable and indelibly haunting – Alexander Larman * Observer *Thrilling… the final fifty pages accelerate until breathing becomes almost impossible * Financial Times *

Anthony Quinn was born in Liverpool in 1964. From 1998 to 2013 he was the film critic for the Independent. His novels include The Rescue Man, which won the 2009 Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award; Half of the Human Race; The Streets, which was shortlisted for the 2013 Walter Scott Prize; Curtain Call, now released as The Critic, a feature film starring Ian McKellen and Gemma Arterton; Freya, Eureka, Our Friends in Berlin, London, Burning and Molly & the Captain. He also wrote the recent Liverpool memoir Klopp.