DI Joanna Piercy

In separate locations in Staffordshire, three separate tableaux are being played out. DI Joanna Piercy is writing to her lover to try and explain recent events, her sidekick Mike Korpanski is filling in insurance forms after his wife has had a prang in the car, and an unknown person is penning love letters to a local doctor. It seems that no one could lead a more mundane life than Beatrice Pennington. Unexciting, mid-forties, married, a part-time librarian, grown-up kids, her life appears unremarkable. But then drama unfolds around her...

For recently engaged DI Joanna Piercy, a murder is the last thing she wants to deal with. Especially one with as dark a back story as that relating to calculating landowner and farmer Jakob Grimshaw; a man who managed to make enemies of all his neighbours and what little family he still had. One thing is certain; Joanna has a tough job ahead of her...

On a snowy December morning, a young woman is found outside Patches nightclub in Leek. Half dead from the cold, she says she has been raped. As Detective Inspector Joanna Piercy, fresh from disciplinary action, investigates, she learns that Kayleigh Harrison has made unsubstantiated allegations before against her stepfather. But there are possible links to a similar rape case six months previously. Is there a real case to investigate or not? Kayleigh holds the key, but how much of her story can be trusted?