'Some wrong was done long ago. It can never be righted, and it has not been forgotten. Someone remembers it.'

London, 1894. Inspector Henry Cutter is in an unconvivial temper.

Then the murders begin. The first to die is Sir Aneurin Considine, a decorated but long retired civil servant, is found dead amongst his beloved orchid collection, killed by a wound inflicted with surgical precision.

Soon, other victims suffer similar fates. More men in powerful positions; more murders that are gruesome but immaculately orchestrated. The perpetrator comes and goes like a ghost, leaving only carefully considered traces.

Hot on the tails of this invisible adversary are Inspector Cutter, along with his hapless but endlessly enthusiastic sidekick, Sergeant Gideon Bliss.

But as the pressure mounts, victims will start to look like perpetrators, murderers like truth-tellers, long-hidden failings will come resurface, and not even their very selves are safe from suspicion.

"A companion to Paraic O'Donnell's 2018 gothic mystery The House on Vesper Sands, The Naming of the Birds unfolds with rising tension and expert pacing . . . O'Donnell's virtuosic style, a mashup of Henry James and Frankie Boyle, is worth the admission price alone" - Guardian

"A stylish historical thriller from a writer of brio and wit" - RTÉ, ‘Fiction Highlights’

"Brilliantly compelling . . . The period detail is perfectly evoked, the dialogue crackling with wit" - Irish Times

"The return of the deliciously irascible Inspector Henry Cutter, star turn of The House on Vesper Sands" - Irish Times, ‘Books to Look Out For in 2025'

"I immensely enjoyed Paraic O'Donnell's The Naming of the Birds, which plunges the audience into smelly, noisy late nineteenth-century London in the company of the redoubtable Inspector Cutter and somewhat less bluff sergeant Gideon Bliss" - Financial Times