In eighteenth century London, architect Nicholas Dyer is at work building churches. Unlike his colleague Christopher Wren, who embraces the scientific optimism of the Age of Reason, Dyer is obsessed with a darker view of human nature, which determines the course of his life and work. His present-day alter ego, a Scotland Yard detective significantly named Nicholas Hawksmoor, is investigating a series of murders which have occured on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches in London. Like Dyer before him, he is wracked with doubts and on the verge of mental disintegration.

In two, dramatic, mirroring stories that unforgettably evoke two eras, Peter Ackroyd has given us an extraordinarily powerful novel of detection and revelation.