Part of Dalziel & Pascoe, book 10
First published 1989
Colin Farr comes back to Burrthorpe, the town he once fled in fury. Young Tracey Pedley disappeared in the local woods, and the community whispers about what really happened to her. Deputy Chief Constable Watmough believes a child-killer took her, a man who later killed himself. But questions remain about the last person who saw Tracey alive and his fatal fall into an abandoned mine shaft. Farr enrolls in a university course where he meets Ellie Pascoe. Their encounter sparks the very trouble he expected on his return. Andy Dalziel watches from the margins, grumbling his complaints, until murder strikes in the Burrthorpe mine. The killing forces Dalziel into action against a community that fears him and wants him gone. The investigation pulls together the threads of past and present violence in a town that guards its secrets.
Genres: suspense, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigation, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Burrthorpe
Period: 20th-century
288 pages · Mass Market Paperback · Warner Books