Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savoury-a human hand. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, wrapped in a purple cotton shroud. The post mortem cannot reveal the precise cause of death. The only clue is a crack in one of the dead man's ribs. Although the police database covers a relatively short period of time, it stores a long list of Missing Persons....

Alan Groombridge had a fantasy. Husband to a woman he didn't like, father of two children he had never wanted, and manager of a tiny bank, Alan was doomed to a life of domestic boredom and tedious routine. All that saved him was that one fantasy: stealing enough of the bank's money to allow him just one year of freedom—one year in which to live a different sort of life.

Alan Groombridge had a fantasy. Husband to a woman he didn't like,

...

Inspector Wexford is plunged into the ubiquitous, secretive realm of domestic violence, where meting out justice is a complex and often delicate business. He knows that these hidden family dramas of humiliation and violence may spill their bounds--and death will claim another victim.

In the waning months of the second World War, a group of children discover an earthen tunnel in their neighborhood. Throughout the summer of 1944--until one father forbids it--the subterranean space becomes their "secret garden," where the friends play games and tell stories. Six decades later, beneath a house on the same land, construction workers uncover a tin box containing two skeletal hands, one male and one female. As the discovery makes national...

A decade after the killing of her stepfather, Ismay is still haunted by nightmares of his murder and of seeing his naked body floating in the bathtub and her sister, Heather, standing over him.