A famous woman athlete, Olympic swimmer Lucy Harrington, has been murdered and her face mutilated; one of her eyes removed. The killer leaves a message at the scene, a fragment of text from a John Donne poem: "Draw not up seas, to drowne me in thy spheare." Officers in charge of the investigation, Detective Inspector John Underwood and Detective Sergeant Alison Dexter, are contacted by a Cambridge lecturer. The murderer has been in touch with Dr Heather Stussmann, a Donne expert, and wants her to explain his actions to the police. A second murder follows and Stussmann and the police struggle to find the link between the victims and the killer and to predict the killer's next move. Could Stussmann herself be on his hit list? For John Underwood it's a nightmare case at a time when his own world is falling apart, his wife Julia is leaving him for another man. For Dexter it's a chance to finally prove herself.
The Yeare's Midnight is a superior debut, intelligent, well-written and with the can't-put-down quality that marks out a potential winner. The disintegration of Underwood and the tensions between the police officers add depth and the puzzles that lie in the poetry give an extra dimension to the mystery. O'Connor also paints a chilling portrait of an extremely disturbed serial killer.