Susan Hill—the Man Booker Prize nominee and winner of the Whitbread, Somerset Maugham, and John Llewellyn Rhys awards—returns with a gripping mystery "eagerly awaited by all aficionados" (P. D. James).
The particularly unpleasant murder of a very old woman in a housing project rocks the town of Lafferton. The murderer has left a distinctive "sign" on the body and at the scene of the crime. A couple of weeks later, a similar murder occurs, and a month or so later, so does another.
Initial investigations reveal that the mysterious "sign" was the calling card of a suspect who was charged with several murders in the northwest of the country, tried but acquitted on the grounds of insufficient evidence. All indications suggest that this person has simply vanished—or is he right under their noses? Simon Serrailler is obliged to delve deeper and scratch out answers in this addictive mystery of surpassing darkness by the bestselling Susan Hill.
Susan Hill ’s novels and short stories have won numerous awards and prizes, including the Whitbread Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Somerset Maugham Award, and the Yorkshire Post Book of the Year, and have been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Honors. The play adapted from her famous ghost novel, The Woman in Black, has been running in the West End since 1989. Her crime novels featuring DCS Simon Serrailler—The Various Haunts of Men, The Pure in Heart, The Risk of Darkness, The Vows of Silence, The Shadows in the Street, The Betrayal of Trust, A Question of Identity, The Soul of Discretion, and The Comforts of Home—are all available from The Overlook Press and are currently being adapted for television.
Steven Pacey is an actor and Earphones Award-winning narrator. He is a highly decorated stage actor, performing often at the West End Theatre. He has appeared in numerous television roles, including Tarrant in Blake’s 7, and has made over three hundred radio broadcasts.