A classic Rendellian loner, Mix Cellini is superstitious about the number 13. Living in a decaying house in Notting Hill, Mix is obsessed with 10 Rillington Place, where the notorious Christie committed a series of foul murders. But when reality intrudes into Mix's life, a long pent-up violence explodes.

Ismay and her sister, Heather, lived in a house in Clapham. Ismay worked in public relations, and Heather in catering. They never discussed the changes to the house. But even lives as private as these, where secrets hang in the air like dust, intertwine with other worlds and other individuals. And the truth will emerge.

Searching for truffles in a wood, a man and his dog unearth something less savory. The body, as Chief Inspector Wexford is informed later, has lain buried for ten years or so, and the post-mortem can not reveal the precise cause of death. Wexford knows it will be a difficult job to identify the corpse.

The Nightingales were always a very happy couple. If a husband and wife never discuss anything but the weather and are waited on hand and foot, what is there to quarrel about? But someone had reason to quarrel with Elizabeth. Someone who was alone with her in the woods that dark September night. Someone who loved her or hated her enough to beat her to death. The case seemed straightforward enough, but Wexford soon discovered that beneath the placid exterior of the Nightingales lives, there were undercurrents and secrets no one had ever suspected."

It seems fitting that the final resting place of a girl's body should be in a graveyard. But this is no peaceful burial. This is a brutal murder scene. Despite opposition from Howard and his team Wexford is drawn to the case.

When the body of a brutally beaten girl is found in a quarry during a hedonistic hippy festival at Sundays near Kingsmarkham, Wexford is first on the scene. Through a web of lies and deceit Wexford uncovers a history of love and hate, and realises that never has he witnessed a murder of such desperate passion.

This case is proving a difficult one for Chief Inspector Wexford. All he has to go on is his own intuitive suspicions. Was he becoming cynical and untrusting or was this one of the most ingenious crimes he had ever tackled?

The messages were coming in thick and fast. Coded messages that John Creevey should never have seen. But the messages were a lifeline to John - a means of getting back his wife and perhaps a way to harm the man who had seduced her away from him.

The chance discovery by Eugene Wren of an envelope filled with banknotes would link the lives of a number of very different people - each with their own obsessions, problems, dreams and despairs. It would also set in motion a chain of events that lead to arson and murder.

As the Chief Inspector investigates a new case, Ruth Rendell looks back to the beginning of Wexford's career, to his courtship of the woman who would become his wife. The past is a haunted place, with clues and passions that leave an indelible imprint on the here and now.