Invited to an exclusive literary festival on an island off the English coast, Hawthorne and Horowitz find themselves investigating a murder amidst a local feud over a disruptive power line. When ex-detective inspector Daniel Hawthorne and his sidekick, author Anthony Horowitz, are invited to an exclusive literary festival on Alderney, an idyllic island off the south coast of England, they dont expect to find themselves in the middle of murder investigation...

In the depths of his Cornish hideaway, retired Detective Inspector Frank Elder's solitary life is disturbed by a call from his ex-wife, telling him his seventeen-year-old daughter, Katherine, is running wild, unbalanced by the abduction and rape he feels he should have prevented. Meanwhile, in the heart of London, the takedown of a violent criminal goes badly, and Detective Sergeant Maddy Birch is uneasy about the reasons why, an uneasiness that is...