Chief Inspector Wexford is walking through Framhurst Great Wood, just outside his beloved town of Kingsmarkham, for what he tells himself will be the last time. He can no longer bear to look at the natural beauty that will soon be despoiled by the construction of a new highway. Wexford rather despairs of the project; his more sanguine wife, Dora, is active on a committee to save the threatened land. Others are more desperate to achieve their end,...

"The bed was neatly made, and the woman on top neatly strangled. According to all accounts, Angela Hathall was deeply in love with her husband and far too paranoid to invite an unknown person into their home. So who managed to gain entry and strangle her without a struggle? That is the problem facing Inspector Wexford in Shake Hands Forever. Perhaps it was the mystery woman who left her fingerprints on the Hathall's bathtub? Perhaps it was Angela's...

It's 1920. Three men are dead, all garroted, all war veterans. When a piece of evidence, kept from the public, suggests a much stronger link between the victims and the unknown, it's up to World War I battered survivor, Scotland Yard Detective Ian Rutledge to find the killer.

Over the years there have been several unsolved, apparently motiveless murders in the town of Kingsmarkham, and Wexford (as a young policeman) quietly suspected that the increasingly prosperous Targo -- van driver, property developer, kennel owner, and animal lover -- was behind them. Now, half a lifetime later, Inspector Wexford spots Targo back in Kingsmarkham after a long absence.

A wealthy woman has been found with a bullet in her head.

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while ... One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed with what he regards as old-fashioned police methods. But Wexford, with his old friend and partner, Mike Burden, along with two new recruits to the Kingsmarkham team, pursue...

When the truffle-hunting dog starts to dig furiously, his master's first reaction is delight at the size of the clump the dog has unearthed; at the going rate, this one truffle might be worth several hundred pounds. Then the dirt falls away to reveal not a precious mushroom but the bones and tendons of what is clearly a human hand. Chief Inspector Wexford tries to piece together events that took place eleven years earlier, a time when someone was...

Hired by the daughters of local writer Melody Chambers to investigate her death, believing she was murdered, Natalka and Edwin go undercover at a creative writing weekend at isolated Battle House where another murder occurs and by the time Edwin infiltrates a sinister book group, he finds himself in danger.

A lump of concrete dropped deliberately from a little stone bridge over a relatively unfrequented road kills the wrong person. The driver behind is spared. But only for a while ... One particular member of the local press is gunning for the Chief Inspector, distinctly unimpressed with what he regards as old-fashioned police methods. But Wexford, with his old friend and partner, Mike Burden, along with two new recruits to the Kingsmarkham team, pursue...