Dalziel & Pascoe

Like father like son....But heredity seems to have gone a gene too far when Pal Maciver's suicide in a locked room exactly mirrors that of his father 10 years earlier. In each case, accusing fingers point towards Pal's stepmother, the beautiful, enigmatic Kay Kafka. But she turns out to have a formidable champion: Mid-Yorkshire's own super-heavyweight, Detective Superintendent Andrew Dalziel.

Caught in the blast of a huge Semtex explosion, the only things preventing Superintendent Andy Dalziel from stepping through Death's door might be his own size and indomitable willpower. As he lies on a hospital bed, it falls on DCI Peter Pascoe to seek justice for Andy. The security services have written it off as an accident: the terrorist suspects have paid for their clumsiness with their lives. Who, then, are the Knights Templar, a shadowy group exacting summary public justice on their enemies?

Convalescing in Sandytown, Dalziel befriends Charlotte Heywood who is researching the benefits of alternative therapy. With much in common, the two soon find themselves in league when trouble comes to town. Sandytown's principal landowners have grandiose plans for the resort -- none of which they can agree on. One of them has to go, and when one of them does, in spectacularly gruesome fashion, DCI Peter Pascoe is called in to investigate -- with Dalziel and Charlotte providing unwelcome support.

It starts with a phone call to Superintendent Dalziel from an old friend asking for help. But where it ends is a very different story. Gina Wolfe has come to Mid-Yorkshire in search of her missing husband, believed dead. Her fiance, Commander Mick Purdy of the Met, thinks Dalziel should be able to take care of the job. What none of them realize is how events set in motion decades ago will come to a violent head on this otherwise ordinary summer's day.