When policemen remove their hats, they do not bring good news. The bare-headed policeman on Trudi Adamson's doorstep brought the worst news possible - her husband Trent has been burned to death in a freak car accident.
Suddenly a widow after years of marriage, Trudi finds herself alone, unprovided for and increasingly aware of her ignorance of her late husband's world. Why had he resigned from his job without telling her? Where was all his money? And more terrifying still: is he really dead? As shock piles upon shock, Trudi is forced to re-examine her belief in Trent, and ultimately in herself. Compelled to leave the cosy nest of her old life, she is fighting for her very survival...
Reginald Hill was brought up in Cumbria, and has returned there after many years in Yorkshire. With his first crime novel, A Clubbable Woman, he was hailed as 'the crime novel's best hope' and twenty years on he has more than fulfilled that prophecy.