A remote island. A twenty-year-old disappearance. A burial ground that should have remained forgotten.
Twenty years ago, Sarah Jamieson vanished from Unst, Britain's most northerly inhabited island. Magnus Stickle searched for her and found nothing. Six months later, broken by failure and the suspicion that followed, he left.
Now, a heritage survey at St Olaf's Kirk has uncovered human remains in forgotten ground beyond the kirk wall. Magnus is called home to face what he left behind.
An archivist by instinct and training, Magnus works the parish registers, the burial records and the silences between them. His search leads him to forbidden ground, hidden burials and a secret someone has spent twenty years protecting.
The island remembers everything. Not all of it wants to be found.
The Buried Butterfly is an atmospheric, slow-burning Scottish crime novel of cold cases, buried history and the secrets held by an isolated island community.