Retired to the English countryside, an eighty-nine-year-old man, rumored to be a once-famous detective, is more concerned with his beekeeping than with his fellow man. Into his life wanders Linus Steinman, nine years old and mute, who has escaped from Nazi Germany with his sole companion: an African gray parrot. What is the meaning of the mysterious strings of German numbers the bird spews out-a top-secret SS code? The keys to a series of Swiss bank...

When four bodies are discovered in the same underground sewer 12 years after the events of A Sight for Sore Eyes, former Chief Inspector Wexford is pulled out of retirement to follow a complex trail to the original murders only to have his life thrown into turmoil by a devastating personal tragedy.

"Murder leaps off the page when crime novelists begin to turn up dead in this intricate new novel by internationally best-selling author Elly Griffiths, a literary mystery perfect for fans of Anthony Horowitz and Agatha Christie"--

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.

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while ... One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed with what he regards as old-fashioned police methods. But Wexford, with his old friend and partner, Mike Burden, along with two new recruits to the Kingsmarkham team, pursue...

"December, 1928. When two bodies are found washed up in the Kentish marshes, it doesn't take long for DCI Henry Johnstone and DS Mickey Hitchens to identify at least one of them. Billy Crane was a known associate of Josiah Bailey, one of the East End's most notorious gangsters. But what were the victims doing in this remote and desolate spot? Is it a set-up? A revenge attack? Or could this be the start of a vicious turf war? If so, who would be brave...

Arriving in the village of Rye, England, in 1914, Beatrice Nash, a young woman of good family, becomes the first female teacher of Latin at the local school and falls in love with her sponsor's nephew. East Sussex, 1914. Hugh Grange is down from his medical studies, visiting relatives. His Aunt Agatha has just risked her carefully built reputation by pushing for the appointment of a woman to replace the Latin master. When Beatrice Nash arrives with...