A seemingly ordinary summer day starts with a phone call to Superintendent Dalziel from an old friend asking for help. But where it ends is a very different story, in this 24th entry in Reginald Hill's sparkling police procedural series, which has earned him the Cartier Diamond Dagger Lifetime Achievement Award and has become a popular BBC series. Gina Wolfe had believed her policeman husband was long dead, until his face appeared in a magazine photo. Dalziel agrees to investigate for her, but over the course of the day his actions threaten to unearth a number of skeletons that some people would kill to keep buried.
"The short time frame of British author Hill's strong 24th Dalziel and Pascoe procedural maximizes suspense without sacrificing either characterization or humor.... Numerous subplots don't slow the pace, a testament to Hill's skill in putting all the pieces together."—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
