Careless in red

What's in this book, at a glance — five things readers want to know before they start.

What this book is about

Thomas Lynley has left the Met after the events of the previous novel and is walking the south Cornwall coast alone, trying to survive his grief. When he comes upon a young man dead at the base of a cliff — an apparent rock-climbing accident that may not have been — he is drawn into an investigation as a civilian. The Cornwall setting is beautifully rendered; the case involves a tight coastal community, a mysterious woman, and a history of resentment that has finally burst. Elizabeth George's fifteenth Lynley novel is the gentlest since the early books — slower, more contemplative, structured around a man relearning how to be in the world.