What's more, the inspector's partner, Barbara Havers, has been suspended and is facing criminal charges of assault and attempted murder. Was Havers really saving a drowning child or was she disobeying orders? Why, then, did she fire a rifle at the detective chief inspector, and how could Lynley ethically justify it? As he grapples with the ramifications of his partner's radical insubordination, the case in Derbyshire grows in daunting complexity.

Once again, Elizabeth George delivers an intricately woven plot, which efficiently navigates the reader through nearly 600 pages. Along the way, readers will be introduced to a delightful cast of supporting characters from the dowdy Phoebe who finds the first gory cadaver to the stately Andy Maiden: "His face was drawn with exhaustion, and his growth of peppery whiskers fanned out from his moustache and shadowed his cheeks." And, of course, fans will get an eyeful of George's trademark, her vivid descriptions of death: "At her feet, a young man lay curled like a foetus, dressed head-to-toe in nothing but black, with that same colour puckering burnt flesh from eye to jaw on one side of his face." --Rebekah Warren