When a savage murder stuns the peaceful countryside of Scotland, Inspector Thomas Lynley is called in to solve the crime, but before he can do that he must find his way through the town's web of lies and secrets.

Hailed as the "king of sleaze," tabloid editor Dennis Luxford is used to ferreting out the sins and scandals of people in exposed positions. But when he opens an innocuous-looking letter addressed to him at The Source, he discovers that someone else excels at ferreting out secrets as well.
Ten-year-old Charlotte Bowen has been abducted, and if Luxford does not admit publicly to having fathered her, she will die. But Charlotte's...

A trip to a wintery island in the English Channel spells peril for forensic scientist Simon St. James and his wife, Deborah, when they discover that the legacy of World War II still haunts the isle's inhabitants.

The career of a playwright comes to an abupt end on an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands when someone drives an 18-inch dirk through her neck.

When Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley, Eighth Earl of Asherton, and his fiancee, Deborah Cotter, arrive at Howenstow, Lynley's family home, they find the atmosphere rife with tension.

Elena Weaver was a surprise to anyone meeting her for the first time. In her clingy dresses and dangling earrings she exuded a sexuality at odds with the innocence projected by the unicorn posters on her walls. While her embittered mother fretted about her welfare from her home in London, in Cambridge—where Elena was a student at St. Stephen's College—her father and his second wife each had their own very different image of the girl. As...

Deborah and Simon St. James have taken a holiday in the winter landscape of Lancastershire, hoping to heal the growing rift in their marriage. But in the barren countryside awaits bleak news: The vicar of Wimslough, the man they had come to see, is dead—a victim of accidental poisoning. Unsatisfied with the inquest ruling and unsettled by the close association between the investigating constable and the woman who served the deadly meal, Simon...

Balford-le-Nez is a dying seaside town on the coast of Essex. But when a member of the town's small but growing Asian community is found murdered near its beach, the sleepy town ignites. Intrigued by the involvement of her London neighbor-Taymullah Azhar-in what appears to be a growing racial conflagration, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers arranges to have herself assigned to the investigation. Setting out on her own, this is one case Havers will...

Acting Supt. Thomas Lynley and Det. Constable Barbara Havers face their most challenging and perilous case yet--the linked murders of four youths, three of black or mixed parentage--in bestseller George's absorbing 13th British police procedural (after 2003's A Place of Hiding). Crime fans will find plenty of forensic minutiae and details of police bureaucracy and politics, but it's characterization at which George really excels. The up-and-down career...

Lynley is sent undercover to investigate the death of Ian Creswell at the request of the man's wealthy uncle. The death has been ruled an accidental drowning, and nothing on the surface indicates otherwise, but when Lynley enlists the help of his friends Simon and Deborah St. James, the trio's digging finds that the clan is awash in secrets, lies and motives.