They are detection's oddest couple: two cranky detectives whose professional partnership dates back half a century. Now Arthur Bryant and John May return in a case of multiple murder that twists through a subterranean course of the secrets, lies, and extreme passions that drive even ordinary men and women to the most shocking crimes….

Detective Inspector Alan Banks has never forgotten the disappearance and presumed death of his best friend in the summer of 1965. When the tragic bones are shockingly unearthed and identified more than 35 years later, the imagined skeleton in the detective's closet becomes all too real and he is drawn into an investigation that hits ...