Thomas Morris

Writer and historian of the remarkable

Blood on the Thames: Murder, Money and the Making of the Modern Detective

In bookshops 12 November

A shocking murder. A suspect with an alibi. A trial that gripped a nation.

‘A brilliantly compulsive read’

The Times

‘A page-turner’

Literary Review

September 1805. Shipbreaking magnate Isaac Blight is shot dead in the parlour of his home overlooking the Thames. Suspicion falls on his business partner Richard Patch. But Patch has an alibi and no obvious motive – and where is the murder weapon?

Enter the Bow Street magistrate Aaron Graham, who must unravel a case that seems designed to defeat detection.

Blood on the Thames is a gripping historical true-crime thriller set in the docklands of Georgian London, published on 12 November.

Think you can solve it? Examine the evidence.

Pre-order now

Out now:

The Dublin Railway Murder

A locked room. A brutal murder. A city transfixed.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE CRIME WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 2022

November 1856. Dublin awakes to the shocking news of a railway cashier found dead in his locked office at the Broadstone terminus — his throat cut, his money untouched. What begins as a suspected suicide soon spirals into one of the most complex murder investigations Victorian Ireland has ever seen.
Drawing on secret police files and original witness statements, The Dublin Railway Murder vividly reconstructs a real-life murder mystery — and the extraordinary events that followed the arrest of the prime suspect.

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About me

I am a writer with interests ranging from the history of medicine to nineteenth-century true crime.
My first book, The Matter of the Heart, was a critically-acclaimed history of cardiac surgery and won an RSL Jerwood Award for non-fiction. My second, The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth, was named one of the best books of 2018 by Mental Floss. The Dublin Railway Murder was shortlisted for the CWA Gold Dagger for non-fiction.

Thomas Morris

Writer and historian

Other books

In The Matter of the Heart, I trace the extraordinary story of how surgeons first dared to operate on the human heart — once thought beyond the reach of medicine. Through eleven remarkable operations, I explore the risks, rivalries and moments of brilliance that transformed the heart from a symbol of life into a site of hope.

From self-surgery to spontaneous combustion, The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth reveals the gruesomely funny side of medicine they never taught at medical school. This collection of extraordinary curiosities brings history’s most bizarre case notes vividly — and hilariously — back to life.

The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth cover