The Book Centre Crime Fiction Book of the Year

Shortlist 2025

The Secret Room

By Jane Casey

A closed door.

An impossible murder.

2:32 p.m. Wealthy, privileged Ilaria Cavendish checks into a luxury London hotel and orders a bottle of champagne. Within the hour, her lover discovers her submerged in a bath of scalding water, dead.

At first glance it looks like an accident. No one went in with her. No one came out. But all the signs point to murder.

For DS Maeve Kerrigan, the case is a welcome distraction. But when shock news hits close to home, affecting her partner, DI Josh Derwent, she faces the toughest challenge of her career. And if she fails her world will never be the same again…

About Jane Casey...

Jane Casey has written fifteen crime novels for adults and three for teenagers. A former editor, she is married to a criminal barrister who helps to ensure her writing is realistic and as accurate as possible.

This authenticity has made her novels international bestsellers and critical successes. The Maeve Kerrigan series has been nominated for many awards: in 2015 Jane won the Mary Higgins Clark Award for The Stranger You Know and Irish Crime Novel of the Year for After the Fire. She also won Irish Crime Novel of the Year in 2019 for Cruel Acts, which was a Sunday Times bestseller, and in 2024 for A Stranger in the Family. Jane’s standalone thriller The Killing Kind has been adapted for television.

Born in Dublin, Jane now lives in southwest London with her husband and two children.

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