At an isolated cottage in the mountains, several very different women are thrown together because of an environmental study. Women who each know the meaning of betrayal. But when Rachel, the leader of the study, arrives at the cottage, she is horrified to discover a body. It is only after another death occurs that another woman enters the picture--the unconventional Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope. --Publisher

The shouts and laughter of Christmas revelers break the muffled silence as Detective Joe Ashworth and his daughter Jessie are swept along onto the Metro. But when the train is stopped due to the bad weather, Jessie notices that one lady hasn't left the train: Margaret Krukowski has been fatally stabbed. Why would anyone want to harm this reserved, elegant lady? Arriving at the scene, DI Vera Stanhope is relieved to have an excuse to escape the holiday...

Northumberland Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope and her partner, Detective Sergeant Joe Ashworth, work to unravel four new crimes.

For fifty years a group of friends have been meeting regularly for reunions on Holy Island, celebrating the school trip where they met, and the friend that they lost to the rising causeway tide five years later. Now, when one of them is found hanged, Vera is called in. Learning that the dead man had recently been fired after misconduct allegations, Vera knows she must discover what the friends are hiding, and whether the events of many years before...

As disheveled and indomitable as ever, DCI Vera Stanhope leads her tightly knit team of Northumberland police through four more daunting cases. No one seems to know anything about the police officer whose body turns up in a slaughterhouse incinerator, the woman killed in a car crash meant to look like an accident, the suburban neighbor found dead in her back garden, and the teenager whose body floats to the surface of a reservoir. How will Vera break...

The central character is Detective Chief Inspector Vera Stanhope. Who is obsessive about her work and driven by her own demons. If she's lonely she doesn't show it and faces the world with caustic wit, guile, and courage. Her trusted an dlong suffering colleague is Sergeant Joe Ashworth. Together they approach every new case with unparalleled gusto and professionalism.