Jo told him the phone call had been about a woman who wanted to have her husband declared dead. Smith thought for a moment and then said, 'Hmm. There must be a few million women in this country who feel like that. I take it her husband's been missing for a while and she's decided it's time to move on. In the absence of a body, which is always a nuisance, she wants Diver and Diver to confirm there's no proof he's alive. And I've told Jason a dozen...

Two weeks of rest and recuperation-that's what the doctor ordered. Detective Sergeant DC Smith could listen to some music, make some of his own, and maybe even catch up on his reading; he is almost looking forward to it. And then there is a knock on the door. It's only his next-door neighbor, but it is the beginning of a sequence of events that will bring him face to face with some of the darkest episodes and the most dangerous people from his own...

Change is afoot at Kings Lake Central police station. A most unexpected new detective inspector takes up his post this Monday morning, and the oldest detective in the place takes a momentous decision. Around them, other officers are considering their own situations, and even the building itself seems to be facing an uncertain future. But life and death go on, nevertheless, and by lunchtime someone will make a grim discovery on the Norfolk saltmarshes....

"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. Sergeant DC Smith and his team have to tread carefully as they investigate what took place, and Smith himself has to confront...

When fourteen-year-old Zoe Johnson doesn't come home on a Monday night in early December, the alarm bells in Kings Lake Central police station do not ring straight away-after all, she's from the Dockmills, one of the toughest estates in the town. But for Detective Sergeant DC Smith, due to retire in just three weeks' time, there are some strange echoes of the case that has haunted him for the past thirteen years. Maybe it's simply his over-developed...

He said if he hadn't heard from you by high noon today, he was going to strap on his six-guns and ride back into town. So I think you should call him, Charlie. Call him before you come home. Charlie Hills, former desk sergeant at Kings Lake Central, is in trouble. He hasn't told Smith, his old friend and sparring partner, but someone has, and now the two former policemen are about to embark on a difficult and potentially dangerous search for the...

"She's just watching, thinking about it again, when a big flash car pulls up outside. No one gets out. Then the doors of the bar open and people appear. Two men and a youngish woman, and one of the men has a hold on the woman's arm. It looks as if they're having words. Then this all happens quickly-they push the woman towards the car, one of the back doors opens, and they manhandle her inside. Sarah hears a muffled shout from the woman and the car...

As the first anniversary of the formation of the Kings Lake murder squad approaches, there is a problem-they've run out of murders. As a result, they are given the task of reviewing unsolved cold cases. One of these comes back to life in unexpected ways as the team try to discover the identity of the young woman whose body was found in the Norfolk countryside two decades ago. And even if they can give her a name, how can they possibly find her killer...

When a local man, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, goes missing, his parents have good reason to be concerned. Emily Willows is a friend of the family and says that she knows just the person to find him-and, as Summer Lane soon points out, the fact that this also fits in with Emily's plan to set up her very own detective agency is surely just a fortuitous coincidence. But it isn't long before the former detective inspector finds herself on a train...