Texas Sheriff Hackberry Holland is a former ACLU attorney and Korean War prisoner. Running from a traumatic and chequered past to become sheriff of a dried-out, broken-down border town in south Texas, Hackberry soon find himself dealing with more than just his own demons after nine dead prostitutes are dug up in the desert.

When Dave Robicheaux gets the call saying his ex-partner Clete Purcel is in jail for felony assault and resisting arrest, bailing him out is instinctive. After all, Clete is the man who saved Dave's life by carrying him down a fire escape with two bullets in his back.

Danny Boy Lorca was used to having apocalyptic visions - the beatings he'd taken in jail and the booze he drank to forget them made sure of that. But what he saw and heard that night out in the desert was more terrifying than anything even his battered spirit could have conjured. A man tortured to death. Slowly and methodically and with inhuman cruelty. When Danny Boy tells his tale to Sheriff Hackberry Holland, Hack knows something evil has leaked over the border into his corner of South Texas. What he doesn't realize is that this brutal slaying is just the beginning of a twisted three-way...

for SSAATB unaccompanied Described by Peter James as one of Tomkins's 'most striking works', this setting of an anonymous devotional text appears in print for the first time. The style is distinctly madrigalian, with several sudden shifts of tonality, changes of texture, and decorative passages. The work will sit as easily in a concert programme as in a service.