When a woman turns up drowned on the grounds of a royal estate, Leeds sergeant Keen Dunliffe is hoping it's just a case of a drunken skinny-dipper who fell and hit her head. But when the woman turns out to be a historian whose specialty is English royalty and politics in the eighteenth century and who was attending a conference at a local university, it's too much of a public relations nightmare to take lightly. The mystery deepens when two secretive men from the Met show up to ask Keen to befriend a colleague of the dead woman's—an American college professor named Dr. Jillie Waltham who was also at the conference—in the hopes that she can shed some light on the victim's life and work. Since tagging along with Jillie means he'll be able to spend some time with his twin sons, who are living with his ex-wife and her fiancé in London, he's not that unhappy to have the assignment. But simple drowning or not, with two such high-ranking government officials interested in the case but unable to tell him why, Keen, known for his rebelliousness and bad temper, is liable to get into more trouble than ever before his investigation is finished. A literary, character-driven, and complex mystery, Kingdom of Lies is Lee Wood's debut of a wonderful new series featuring Sergeant Keen Dunliffe and Professor Jillie Waltham.

A U.S. marshal and her prisoner are gunned down outside London's Heathrow Airport just as the prisoner is to testify against the head of a violent animal-rights group. Leeds Detective Sergeant Keen Dunliffe doesn't seem like the right man for the case, except that he has the undercover experience and knowledge of Yorkshire, the terrorists' backyard. He's ordered to head up a sting operation with Rachel Colver, an inexperienced police constable, who may have personal ties that will help her infiltrate the animal-rights group. However, Keen is worried about a plan that puts Rachel in obvious peril. As the two hunker down to work the case from the inside, brutal extremists and police politics collide, involving murder, intimidation, smuggling, and blackmail with lethal consequences.