A brilliant standalone novel hailed as “some of the best crime fiction to hit bookstores this year” (Hollywood Reporter) and a prequel to the hit BBC America TV show Luther, by the Edgar Award–winning creator and sole writer of the show.

Is Luther a force for good or a man hell-bent on self-destruction?

Meet Detective Chief Inspector John Luther. He’s a homicide detective with an extraordinary case-clearance rate. He’s obsessive, instinctive, and intense. Nobody who ever stood at his side has a bad word to say about him. And yet there are rumors that Luther is bad—not corrupt, but tormented. After years of chasing the most depraved criminals in London’s gritty underworld, he seethes with a hidden fury he can barely control, making him do things any other detective wouldn’t and shouldn’t do.

Luther: The Calling is the story of the serial killer case that tore Luther’s personal and professional relationships apart and propelled him over the precipice—beyond fury, beyond vengeance, all the way to the other side of the law.

Luther: The Calling, the first in a new series of novels featuring DCI John Luther, takes us into Luther’s past and into his mind. It is the story of the serial killer case that tore his personal and professional relationships apart and propelled him over the precipice—beyond fury, beyond vengeance, all the way to the other side of the law. Is Luther a force for good or a man hell-bent on self-destruction? Edgar Award–winning writer Neil Cross has created one of the most compelling characters in modern crime fiction. Luther: The Calling is a compulsively readable novel by the writer hailed by The Guardian as “Britain’s own Stephen King.”