'The Alan Banks mystery-suspense novels are the best series on the market. Try one and tell me I'm wrong' Stephen King

***THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER***

Murder is only the beginning for Banks and his team . . .

The gruesome double murder at an Eastvale property developer's luxury home should be an open and shut case for Superintendent Banks and his team of detectives. There's a clear link to the notoriously vicious Albanian mafia, men who left the country suspiciously soon after the death. Then they find a cache of spy-cam videos hidden in the house - and Annie and Gerry's investigation pivots to the rape of a young girl that could cast the murders in an entirely different light.

Banks's friend Zelda, increasingly uncertain of her future in Britain's hostile environment, thinks she will be safer in Moldova hunting the men who abducted, raped and enslaved her than she is Yorkshire or London. Her search takes her back to the orphanage where it all began - but by stirring up the murky waters of the past, Zelda is putting herself in greater danger than any she's seen before.

And as the threat escalates, so does the danger for Banks and those who love Zelda . . .

'The master of the police procedural' Mail on Sunday