L'inspecteur Banks refuse de croire, comme Joanna Passero de l'Inspection générale de la police, que l'inspecteur Bill Quinn, tué d'un flèche dans un centre de rééducation, était corrompu. Les recherches de Banks le conduisent sur la piste d'une jeune Anglaise disparue six ans plus tôt en Estonie.
Our story begins with a stolen tractor, hardly a job for Inspector Banks and his Homicide and Major Crimes team, but the new police commissioner has put rural crime high on her agenda. At the same time, an apparent crime scene is discovered in an old hangar at an abandoned World War II airfield. In addition, two local lads are missing. One of them lives in a caravan, which is burned to the ground one night, and the other's girlfriend receives an unwelcome visit from someone impersonating a police officer.
Inspector Banks investigates the murder of a quiet historian, Harry Steadman, in the British Dales. The case becomes complicated when young Sally Lamb, the only witness to the murder, disappears. Some descriptions of sex and some strong language.
Brenda Scupham's 7-year-old daughter, Gemma, is abducted by a man and a woman posing as social workers. As the days go by, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks begins to lose hope of finding Gemma alive.
Caroline Hartley, an actress in a local amateur production, is found brutally stabbed in the apartment she shares with her female lover. During his investigation, Inspector Banks visits the old London haunts that he patrolled as a young police constable. Winner of the 1994 Torgi Talking Book of the Year Award for Fiction. Strong language, descriptions of violence.
Detective Chief Inspector Banks is called to an isolated Yorkshire farmhouse, where accountant Keith Rothwell lies as a featureless corpse. Banks can discern nothing out of the ordinary after questioning Rothwell's exceptionally calm wife and daughter, who were tied up by the two hooded killers. Later, Banks discovers a money laundering scheme, a shifty solicitor, a second team of villains, and some mysteries about Rothwell himself.
The murder of a 16-year-old girl from a wealthy family involves Banks in an investigation complicated by outside priorities. The new Chief Constable, a friend of the girl's industrialist father, presses for a quick arrest, and the police are led to Owen Pierce, a young teacher of troubled character. But Banks is not convinced -- there are too many loose ends, too many other suspects, too many secrets.
