When Ludlow Fitch's parents cruelly betray him he steals away on the back of a carriage & leaves behind the stinking City. He arrives in the dead of night at a remote village where he crosses paths with the tall & limping figure of Joe Zabbidou
- a pawnbroker with a difference. For Joe trades secrets not goods for cash. Ludlow is employed to record the villagers' fiendish confessions in The Black Book of Secrets. Bodysnatching; thievery; murder. The people of Pagus Parvus have much to hide. But is Ludlow Fitch ready to release his own skeletons? & will he ever learn to trust his mysterious master?