Inspector Wexford is called in when the body of a young woman, strangled with her own silk scarf, turns up in the Montfort family vault in a London cemetery.

Anita Margolis, young, beautiful, carefree, has vanished into thin air. She left her home to attend a party one wet evening, but has not been seen since. She is reported missing soon after by her brother, whom she shared a flat with, the acclaimed but eccentric artist Rupert Margolis. Inspector Burden quickly forms an impression of a wanton young girl simply gone off somewhere with a boyfriend having neglected to let anyone know. After all, she was...

"A female Vicar named Sarah Hussein is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham Vicarage. The gossipy cleaning woman who discovers her body, Maxine, happens to also be in the employ of retired Chief Inspector Wexford and his wife. When detective inspector Mike Burden calls him, Wexford, intrigued by the unusual circumstances of the murder, leaps at the chance to tag along with the investigators. A single-mother to a teenage girl, Hussein was a woman...

Friday the thirteenth of May was most unlucky day for Sergeant Caleb Martin of Kingsmarkham CID. That day he confiscated a replica gun from his son's school briefcase and lost his life in a bank robbery -- the first link in a chain of events which led to a series of deaths. When three people are discovered shot at Tancred House, Chief Inspector Wexford suspects a connection between the two apparently unrelated crimes. But only the seventeen-year-old...