The Corpse in the Anatomist’s Chair by Celia Vellgrave

A corpse should not be able to lie. Its paperwork, however, can.

In Victorian Edinburgh, Octavia Rooke has spent her life among surgical blades, anatomical drawings, and the instruments of medicine—close enough to knowledge to master it, but never close enough to be granted the authority respectable men reserve for themselves. During a medical demonstration, she notices something the assembled physicians have missed.

The cadaver in the anatomist's chair is far too fresh.

Worse, a seemingly ordinary anatomical cut conceals evidence of violence.

Someone has placed a recently murdered man inside a legitimate supply of bodies intended for medical teaching, trusting that dissection will destroy what remains of the crime.

Octavia turns to Mara Venn, the one woman in Edinburgh who understands the city from an entirely different direction. Mara knows the carriers, porters, servants, undertakers, warehouses, favors, debts, and unofficial routes through which objects—and bodies—move after respectable doors have closed.

Together they trace the corpse backward through anatomical theatres, private preparation rooms, transport carts, falsified receipts, and professional rivalries. But the deeper they look, the less straightforward the deception becomes. Doctors have altered records to protect reputations. Suppliers have falsified accounts for money. Clerks have manipulated identities. Respectable institutions have secrets of their own.

They are all lying.

But only one of those lies conceals a murderer.

As Octavia reconstructs what was done to the dead, Mara follows the people who made it possible. Their investigation draws them into a medical establishment determined to protect its prestige—and forces both women to confront an increasingly personal question. Their desire for one another is no longer uncertain. What remains uncertain is what either of them is prepared to promise.

Because discovering who killed a man may prove easier than deciding which other secrets deserve to survive.

The Corpse in the Anatomist's Chair is the second novel in The Anatomy of Secrets, a sensual Victorian historical mystery series blending fair-play detection, gothic atmosphere, morally complex characters, medical intrigue, and an evolving sapphic romance.