The Lock-Keeper's Last Puzzle

About this book

Fenny Wharf, 2089: four hundred people, seven locks, no electricity for fifty-eight years, and a puzzle chalked on the Top Lock beam every Sunday. When the lock-keeper, Silas Venn, is found drowned the morning after Lantern Night, the Council calls it an accident. Sixteen-year-old Clem Arkwright, the Reckoner's apprentice and the town's most gifted improver of the truth, is sure it was murder, and she tells the Council she saw a stranger on the lock at midnight. She didn't. Now Wenna Lusk, the trader's daughter she named, is trapped in the Wharf with the ice coming, and the only way to undo the damage is to work beside her on the old man's last puzzles. Seven clues. Seven locks. One message. And a town that would much rather not read it.