A faceless corpse has been found in a remote valley in the Yorkshire Dales. Is it connected to another murder there, five years earlier? Chief Inspector Alan Banks in­ves­ti­gates in the village of Swaineshead, which leads him to Toronto to dig into the dead man’s background.

Competent, thoughtful police procedural told from the viewpoints of Banks and Katie Greenock, the doormat wife of one of the villagers.