When a known serial killer is found with shears sticking out of his chest and an ice pick in his hand, Kathy Mallory and her NYPD Special Crimes partner Detective Sgt. Riker are called in to investigate. One of the occupants of Winter House, the scene of the crime, is 70-year-old Nedda Winter, who immediately confesses to the killing, claiming; it was self-defence.Murder solved, case closed. It s even poetic justice.However Nedda Winter is in fact the most famous lost child in NYPD historv, missing for almost sixty years, thought to he kidnapped following the massacre of her family… with an ice pick.As Mallory and her official and unofficial partners, Riker and Charles Butler, delve into the familys history, a remarkable story begins to emerge – one of murderous greed and family horror, abandonment and loss, revenge and twisted love – a ghost story peopled by all-too-real flesh and blood. But Winter House doesn’t give up its dead so easily, and Mallory will have to reopen the original investigation in order to try and stop the murderer from finishing what they started.Intricate plotting, resonant characters and incisive prose make Winter House O’Connell’s most powerful and most astonishing novel to date.