Over the years there have been several unsolved, apparently motiveless murders in the town of Kingsmarkham, and Wexford (as a young policeman) quietly suspected that the increasingly prosperous Targo--van driver, property developer, kennel owner, and animal lover--was behind them. Now, half a lifetime later, Inspector Wexford spots Targo back in Kingsmarkham after a long absence.

While investigating a series of unrelated murders, Inspector Wexford discovers that the victim of a piece of falling concrete, pushed off a highway overpass, is somehow linked to the bludgeoning death of a teenager killed after a late night out with her friends.

"Hired by the daughters of local writer Melody Chambers to investigate her death, believing she was murdered, Natalka and Edwin go undercover at a creative writing weekend at isolated Battle House where another murder occurs and by the time Edwin infiltrates a sinister book group, he finds himself in danger."--

When a young girl's body is found in a London cemetery and the local police, under the command of Wexford's nephew, are baffled, Wexford decides to brave his doctor's wrath and the condescension of the London police by doing a little investigating of his own. For the canny, tireless, and unflappable policeman is an unblinking observer of human nature, whose study has taught him that under certain circumstances the most unlikely people are capable

...

As an eighteenth-century Englishwoman without property rights, Beatrice is destined to lose what she loves most--her fammily's ancestral estate, Wideacre--unless her ambitious schemes succeed.

"A female Vicar named Sarah Hussein is discovered strangled in her Kingsmarkham Vicarage. The gossipy cleaning woman who discovers her body, Maxine, happens to also be in the employ of retired Chief Inspector Wexford and his wife. When detective inspector Mike Burden calls him, Wexford, intrigued by the unusual circumstances of the murder, leaps at the chance to tag along with the investigators. A single-mother to a teenage girl, Hussein was a woman...

Cissie Rowe, a rising star of the silent screen, is found brutally murdered in her own home in the seaside town of Shoreham-By-Sea, home to a film studio and thriving theatrical community. DCI Henry Johnstone and DS Mickey Hitchens are despatched to investigate.