When young Tracey Pedley vanished in the woods around Burrthorpe, the close-knit community had their own ideas about what had happened. But Deputy Chief Constable Watmough has it down as the work of a child-killer who has since committed suicide -- though others wondered about the man's fatal plunge into a disused mine shaft. Returning to a town he left in anger, Colin Farr's homecoming is ready for trouble, and when a university course brings him into contact with Ellie Pascoe, trouble starts. . . Meanwhile, a murder in Burrthorpe Mine forces Andy Dalziel to take action that brings him up against a hostile and frightened community...