The Mermaids Singing

The census claim is confirmed: UK HarperCollins (London), November 1995, is the true first, and it took the CWA Gold Dagger for 1995. The first US edition is a genuinely separate and later book — HarperCollins (New York), December 1996, ISBN 0061011746 / 9780061011740, black cloth in jacket — and is collected in America in its own right, so both editions warrant cataloguing, but the UK 1995 issue is the first. This is the first Tony Hill / Carol Jordan novel. First-thus traps: the 2002 St. Martin's/Minotaur US reissue, the Harper mass-market issues, and the later HarperCollins reissues tied to the Wire in the Blood television series.