The depths of winter in the isolated Yorkshire Dales and a teenage girl is missing. At a derelict farm high up on a hillside Steven Rutter, a destitute loner, harbours secrets. Nobody knows the bleak moors better than him, or their hiding places. Obsessive, taciturn and solitary, detective Jim Brindle is relentless in pursuing justice. But he is not alone in his growing preoccupation with the case. Local journalist Roddy Mace has moved north from London to build a new life. As Brindle and Mace begin to prise the secrets of the case from tight-lipped locals, their investigation leads first to the pillars of the community and finally to a local celebrity and fixture of the nation's Saturday night TV. 'Lovely Larry' Lister has his own hiding places, and his own dark tastes. A tour de force in plotting and atmosphere, Turning Blue is a terrifying and gripping tale of hidden lives, and hidden deaths.

As autumn draws in, a Pennine valley town famed for its alternative lifestyles is shocked to its core when a woman is savagely attacked. The identity of her assailant proves illusive but her colourful past in the amateur world of adult entertainment makes her a tabloid sensation overnight. When further attacks occur, group hysteria spreads and the community seeks a scapegoat... Journalist Roddy Mace is struggling to stay sober whilst completing the writing of a true crime book based on a previous case. Detective James Brindle, on an enforced leave of absence from secretive crime unit, Cold Storage, is rapidly unravelling without a case to focus on. The two reunite to discover how old myths align with new fears, and the deep history of folk-crimes that lie within the bleak moorlands. In These Darkening Days a rural idyll is shattered by an outbreak of violence and a place steeped in ancient history becomes the focus of an accelerating modern media that favours immediacy over truth.