The Shadow in the North (Sally Lockhart #2)

The TV guides are now hinting at what's on over Christmas and one of the highlights is the second Sally Lockhart adventure following on from last year's Ruby in the Smoke. From the BBC press release:

Billie Piper heads an all-star cast, including Julian Rhind-Tutt, JJ Feild, Jared Harris, Matt Smith, John Standing and Hayley Atwell, in The Shadow In The North. This second book in a quartet by novelist Philip Pullman charts the adventures of Sally Lockhart, a feisty, young Victorian heroine (Piper).

Bafta Award-winning Adrian Hodges (Charles II, Rome, The Lost World and Pullman's first novel in the series, The Ruby In The Smoke), has adapted Pullman's intricate and cleverly woven plot and set it in the heart of Victorian London.

An elderly lady loses her money on an investment; a conjuror is pursued by thugs; and a clairvoyant sees a brutal murder in a forest and a glass coffin, then whispers the name of the richest man in Europe. These seemingly unconnected events set Sally Lockhart on the trail of an evil far more awful than she could ever imagine: the Hopkinson Self-Regulator, a super-weapon in the hands of Scandinavian madman Axel Bellmann.

Once again, Pullman's much-loved and fearless heroine embarks on a mission – this time to find out why her elderly client's investment crashed and what links the clairvoyant's murderous vision to the rich industrialist, Bellmann. As Sally closes in on the truth, it becomes devastatingly clear that her life will never be the same again.