Hill is an instinctive & complete novelist who is blessed with a spontaneous storytelling gift Frances Fyfield Mail on Sunday When young Tracey Pedley vanished in the woods around Burrthorpe the close-knit community had their own ideas about what had happened but Deputy Chief Constable Watmough has it down as the work of a child-killer who has since committed suicide
- though others wondered about the last man to see her alive & his fatal plunge into the disused mine shaft. Returning to a town he left in anger Colin Farrs homecoming is ready for trouble & when a university course brings him into contact with Ellie Pascoe trouble starts... Meanwhile Andy Daziel mutters imprecations on the sidelines until a murder in Burrthorpe mine forces him to take action that brings him up against a hostile & frightened community...