Years ago, young Tracey Pedley disappeared in the woods around Burrthorpe. The close-knit mining village had its own ideas about what happened, but the police pinned it on a known child-killer who subsequently committed suicide. Now Burrthorpe comes to police attention again. A man?s body is discovered down a mine shaft and it?s clear he has been murdered. Dalziel and Pascoe?s investigation takes them to the heart of a frightened and hostile community....

Sergeant Pascoe finds his social life and work uncomfortably brought together by a terrible triple murder. Meanwhile, Dalziel is pressuring him about a string of unsolved burglaries, and as events unfold the two cases keep getting jumbled in his mind.

In this novel the best detective duo in British crime writing are investigating murder amongst the upper classes and there is also the unlikely prospect of Dalziel being in love.

In T.L. Beddoes' play 'Death's Jest-Book', the dead won't lie still in the grave and the living often wish they could. And Reginald Hill's novel is much the same - except perhaps for a few more jests.

Gina Wolfe is searching for her missing husband, believed dead, and thinks Superintendent Dalziel can help. What neither realize is that there are others on the same trail. Dalziel and Pascoe are about to learn the hard way exactly just how much difference a day makes.

Cissy Kohler has been in jail for murder for nearly 30 years and Detective Superintendent Dalziel is convinced she's guilty. But, investigating further, he soon finds his certainties being eroded and his reputation at stake.

Inspector Pascoe investigates when three old men die on a stormy night. When the dying words of one of the victims suggests that a drunken Superintendent Dalziel had been behind the wheel, the integrity of the Yorkshire constabulary is called into question.

A ravaged wood packed with water-filled craters, men in uniform and a skeletal hand reaching out of the mud. This is not a battlefield, but Wanwood House, a pharmaceutical research centre, and another mystery for Dalziel and Pascoe to solve.