‘The story is expertly told, skein by skein, with a new knot to be untied just when you think everything is clear’ Sunday Telegraph

1963. It was the year of the Profumo Scandal, the Great Train Robbery, the Kennedy Assassination – and the Mickeldore Hall Murder.

The guests at the Hall that weekend included a Tory minister, a CIA officer, a British diplomat – and Cissy Kohler, a young American nanny who had come to England for love. And love kept her in England for nearly thirty years. In jail. For murder.

Revisiting the case many years later, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel finds his certainty over Cissy’s guilt is shaken – a rare state of affairs. And it looks as if not only is his old boss’s reputation at stake, but his own too…

Reviews

‘Few writers in the genre today have Hill’s gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humour, compassion and a prose style that blends elegance and grace’ Donna Leon, Sunday Times

‘The fertility of Hill’s imagination, the range of his power, the sheer quality of his literary style never cease to delight’ Val McDermid, Sunday Express

‘An increasingly lyrical and always humorous writer, he is first and foremost an instinctive and complete novelist who is blessed with a spontaneous storytelling gift’ Frances Fyfield, Mail on Sunday

‘He is probably the best living male crime writer in the English-speaking world’ Andrew Taylor, Independent

‘Reginald Hill’s novels are really dances to the music of time, his heroes and villains interconnecting, their stories entwining’ Ian Rankin, Scotland on Sunday

About the author

Reginald Hill was brought up in Cumbria and has returned there after many years in Yorkshire. With his first novel, A Clubbable Woman, he was hailed as ‘the crime novel’s best hope’ and twenty years on he has more than fulfilled that promise