The Serpent's Tail

In the rain-slicked streets of Helmsford, a decaying New England town, architect Julian Croft is about to claim his inheritance—the vast estate of his late father, magnate Silas Croft. But when his estranged half-brothers and their lawyer conspire with a corrupt psychiatrist, Julian finds himself dragged into Blackwood Asylum, diagnosed with paranoid delusions fabricated from his own desperate claims of truth. Stripped of his identity, subjected to electroshock and heavy sedation, he clings to one fragile lifeline: Dr. Viola Mears, a weary but uncorrupted resident physician who begins to suspect the monstrous greed behind his incarceration. As Julian battles to preserve his sanity and prove his story, he discovers that the asylum's walls conceal older, darker secrets—and that the serpent's tail of greed coils not only around his family, but through the very foundations of Blackwood itself. A work inspired by the moral chiaroscuro of Andrea Camilleri's crime fiction, this is a tale of institutional corruption, familial treachery, and one man's fight for his mind.