Escape to the country? Escape to murder... When a geriatric walking group finds a very dead body at a local beauty spot, Inspector Zig Batten begins to regret his transfer from urban Yorkshire to not-so-sleepy Somerset. Is it a coincidence that the victim worked at the vast private estate of Wake Hall - home of a shifty horse-sales business run by a slap-happy Northern adversary and his crew? What exactly is being transported in the horse-boxes that trundle in and out of Wake Hall? And what is the role of the maverick Lady Wake? Batten strives to find out, while juggling liaison with the Greek police, escalating thefts, and tensions within his new team. His daydreams, the victim's past, and the increasingly complex real world produce as many questions as answers, until - against a backdrop of Christmas celebrations - the human cost of crime reaches tragic heights. Reluctantly, Batten must fly to Corfu to seek a solution....

January, white frost, a pitch-black orchard. The ancient ritual of 'Wassailing' begins with a torchlight procession and ends with shotguns being fired into the trees, to scare off ‘evil spirits’ and revive the apple blossom. But not every shotgun fires blanks, and next day a dead body has blossomed in the orchard. What is the killer’s motive? Why this victim? And who is sending anonymous letters to the villagers of Stockton Marsh, where Detective Inspector Batten’s own Sergeant lives? Winter closes in, but murder does not stop with the dead - it tunnels into the living too, as Batten and Sergeant Ball discover. Will their own endangered lives and relationships ever be quite the same? As snow descends, the police make ready. Until another corpse is found...

Crown of Thorns Hill, clad in April mist, towers over the quiet village of East Thorne. But on Good Friday, when the mist clears, the villagers wake to a malign vision at the hill's peak - a sight which catapults a flu-ridden Inspector Zig Batten from his holiday bed to a scene of desecration. Who is the victim? And what vengeful mind would dispose of a body here, like this? In his search for reasons, Batten finds himself at odds with warring churchmen, lost lovers, ranting conservationists and shady developers. Even Batten and his colleagues struggle with their own mixed motives. Do the threatened dwellings and apple-orchard of Turks Lane hold the answer? Or is it buried in the victim's past? As the Easter weekend unfolds, Batten fears the worst is still to come...

Who was the once-beautiful loner, nicknamed Queen Mab? And why did vicious hands take a knife to her throat? When, against advice, Inspector Zig Batten re-opens the Queen Mab casefile, a tangle of lovers, broken families and shifty artists gushes out. Do answers lie in Queen Mab’s bewildering journal, or in her travels? Batten’s unofficial quest from Somerset to the shores and mountains of Greece, to Cornwall, and to his native Yorkshire digs up her trail – but unearths much more than he bargained for. And as the mystery echoes the lives of those around him, his search for Queen Mab's killer threatens his own life - from without and from within…