Former cop Frank Elder is drawn out of retirement when his ex-wife asks him to look into the disappearance of her friend Jennie s sister Claire in Nottingham. Elder reluctantly returns to the city where his family disintegrated.
Elder uncovers sexual secrets of Claire s that take Jennie by surprise. But when Claire is found dead at home unmarked and carefully dressed it is Elder who is surprised by the similarities to an old case. To solve this riddle, Elder will have to repartner with Detective Inspector Maureen Prior and delve into several suspects traumatic histories.
In a case in...

Retirement has not come easy for Detective Inspector Frank Elder. He's fled to a solitary existence on the Cornish coast, but he can't escape the past. Susan Blacklock would be thirty now. But fourteen years ago she disappeared, and the case has gone unsolved. Not that Elder hadn't had his suspects. And now, with one of them out on parole, Elder is compelled to return to the seaside scene of the crime. Shortly thereafter, pretty Emma Harrison goes missing.
Just as Elder's knowledge becomes crucial to the official investigation of this disquieting case, he unwittingly becomes vital to its...

In the depths of his Cornish hideaway, retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder s solitary life is disturbed by a call from his ex-wife, telling him his seventeen-year-old daughter, Katherine, is running wild, unbalanced by the abduction and rape he feels he should have prevented. Meanwhile, in the heart of London, the takedown of a violent criminal goes badly, and Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch is uneasy about the reasons why, an uneasiness that is compounded when she starts to believe she is being stalked.
Maddy and Frank had a brief and clumsy encounter years before. In Ash & Bone...