Elizabeth George's first novel, A Great Deliverance, was honoured with the Anthony and Agatha Best First Novel awards in America and received the Grand Prix de Litterature Policiere in France. The critically acclaimed Payment in Blood followed, and Well-Schooled in Murder, which was awarded the prestigious German prize fbr international mystery fiction, the MIMI, in 1990.A Suitable Vengeance, For the Sake of Elena, Missing Joseph, Playing for the Ashes, In the Presence of the Enemy and, most recently, Deception on his Mind were also highly acclaimed.

Two bodies - the corpses of a young man and woman - are discovered in the middle of a pre-historic stone circle in

Derbyshire. Each met death in a different fashion. Each died violently.The grisly crime promises to be one of the toughest assignments of Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley's career. For the dead girl was the daughter of a former officer in an elite undercover unit, a man Lynley once regarded as a mentor. Now, as Lynley wrestles with the intricacies of the case in the Peak District, Barbara Havers, determined to redeem herself after her recent demotion, crisscrosses London seeking information on the second victim.

As the pieces of the puzzle begin to fall into place, Lynley and Havers are once again forced to confront the icy realisation that human relationships are often murderous.., and that the blood that binds can also kill.