Elizabethan Surgeon Detective

Set in the late 1500s in Elizabethan England the first half of this book sets the scene with how our surgeon discovers what may be a serial killer, but as it is mainly poor people no one is interested. Before he can look into it any further though he meets with a family tragedy when his wife dies giving childbirth, our surgeon finds it too hard to go on and decides to kill himself by throwing himself into the Thames. However some kind soul rescues him and nurses him back to health, his guardian angel a local tavern keeper who also happens to be female and a secret apothecary (females doing this job being frowned upon in that era). Once he is almost back to his old self he decides to do something about that case that was interrupted by the death of his wife and embarks on finding out who was responsible.
The text alternates chapters between the main story and the story of a little girl who seems to be one of the victims. The second half of the book really picks up pace with some red herrings and kept me guessing pretty much to the end when we discover the fate of the girl we had been getting snippets of throughout.