Having narrowly survived injuries sustained when he was caught in a huge explosion, Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel is still on leave from the Yorkshire police department, recuperating at the Avalon Clinic in the quaint seaside resort of Sandytown. But he soon begins to suspect that those outside the convalescent home have just as many problems as the residents. There’s a psychiatrist with more to hide than his patients, a pair of powerful landowners with very different plans for putting the resort on the map, and a man from Dalziel’s past who ought to be dead. When someone actually does turn up dead, and under the most macabre circumstances, Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe is called onto the scene. Together again, Dalziel and Pascoe investigate a baffling and complex case as further corpses make it increasingly hard for Sandytown to justify its claim to be “Home of the Healthy Holiday.” But it's certainly been put on the map. From charred corpses to Jane Austen allusions, is a police procedural with something for everyone as it “offers an intellectually satisfying mystery, deep character studies and witty social commentary clothed in elegant, literate prose” ( ).