Simon Serrailler has just wrapped up a particularly exhausting and difficult case for SIFT Special Incident Flying Taskforce - and is on a sabbatical on a far flung Scottish island when he is called back by the Chief Constable before his leave is due to end. Two local prostitutes have gone missing and are subsequently found strangled. By the time he gets back, another girl has disappeared. Is this a vendetta against prostitutes by someone with a warped mind ? Or a series of killings by an angry punter? But then the wife of the new Dean of St Michael s Cathedral goes missing, followed by another respectable young married woman, on her way to the early shift at the print works. Is this all the work of one serial killer? Serailler follows lead after lead, all of which become dead-ends. The fear is that more women will be killed, and that the murderer is right under their noses; meanwhile the public grow more angry and afraid. It is only through a piece of luck, a chance meeting and a life put in grave danger, which finally gets a result

Author Biography

Susan Hill was born in Scarborough and educated at King's College London. She is married to the Shakespeare scholar, Stanley Wells, and they have two daughters. She lives in Gloucestershire, where she runs her own small publishing firm, Long Barn Books. Susan Hill's novels and short stories have won the Whitbread, Somerset Maugham and John Llewelyn Rhys awards and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is the author of over forty books, including the four previous Serrailler crime novels, The Various Haunts of Men, The Pure in Heart, The Risk of Darkness and The Vows of Silence. Her most recent novel isThe Beacon. The play adapted from her famous ghost story, The Woman in Black, has been running on the West End stage since 1989.