Summary

The Prologue is set in 1917 Edinburgh, in a kirkyard outside of a church in the poor part of town. It is a dark night, and two young men, Davey and Munroe, are digging up a body. Munroe is down in the ditch and calls to Davey to throw down the rope. Munroe wraps the rope around the body’s foot, and Davey pulls the body up. They have to take all the clothes off the body because, while it is a crime to steal bodies, it is a greater crime to steal any clothes or any other objects from the grave. This is the body of a woman, and they found out about the body from a woman named Jeanette. Resurrection men like Davey and Munroe pay Jeanette money to find out which new bodies have been buried without stone slabs over...