On Sale: May 12, 2026
Page Count: 336 pages
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
ISBN-13: 9781454968542

$19.99

$25.99 CAD

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Trade Paperback $19.99 $25.99 CAD
ebook (Digital original) $11.99 $15.99 CAD

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In this thrilling novel, dark secrets and reminders of the past must be brought into the light as DC Smith and his team try to stick together and solve their most challenging case yet.

“We are living in the departure lounge,” said Ralph Greenwood, “and flights leave with monotonous regularity.” So when another resident of the Rosemary House care home is found dead in her chair one Saturday evening in December, no-one is very surprised—not until the results of a routine post-mortem reveal something extraordinary.

Police Sergeant DC Smith and his team have to tread carefully as they investigate what took place, and Smith himself has to confront some difficult memories. Others, meanwhile, seem intent on getting him to leave the force altogether, while, despite his best efforts, his social life also becomes a little more complicated. To top it all, Kings Lake has been waiting weeks for the snow to fall, in a winter that seems as if it will never end …

Genre:

Series:

"The gruff and uncompromising Smith is a copper in the spirit of George Gently and John Rebus—that is, complicated and not cartoonish."
Publisher's Weekly
"The books are comforting, the writing is subtle and the plots are gripping."
The Times of London
"What sets Grainger's books apart from the typical police procedural is the fully realized characters...That and his elegant prose, with its pitch-perfect dialogue, which gets more assured and more playful in each."
Financial Times

Peter Grainger

About the Author

Peter Grainger is a former sixth-form English teacher and the author of 23 novels. He lives with his wife, sometimes a grandson, and a dog in a cottage in the Cambridgeshire fens. He travels as often as possible to the Norfolk coast he once called home.

Learn more about this author