EVIL LIES UNDETECTED. When shepherd Jud Hope finds an American passport in a fox’s earth, a connection is made to an unidentified fatality – an elderly female walker who fell to her death in a treacherous rocky gill near Ambleside. Meanwhile, a spate of ‘nighthawker’ incidents sees ancient monuments desecrated under cover of darkness. The spotlight falls upon Derek Shaw, a museum curator exploring Cumbria’s Roman heritage. Onto this stage emerges a second senior American hiker, Dorothy Baum. The intrepid Dorothy is here to meet her online sweetheart, Professor Felix Stowe-Upland, an expert in classical archaeology. But when Felix fails to materialise, Dorothy falls in with an eccentric walking companion, ‘Kooky Cathy’, as she comes to call her. Derek Shaw seems to be shadowing the pair. Felix remains elusive, stringing Dorothy along with promises of his arrival. Skelgill and his team realise Dorothy is in jeopardy. But they are two steps behind and the clock is ticking. She is somewhere in the fells, but where? The chain of Roman forts that she follows stretches from Ravenglass on the southwest coast, to Penrith in the far northeast. And Dorothy seems to be covering her tracks. BRUCE BECKHAM is an award-winning author and copywriter. A resident of Great Britain, he has travelled and worked in over 60 countries. He is published in both fiction and non-fiction, and is a member of the UK Society of Authors. His series ‘Inspector Skelgill Investigates’ features the recalcitrant Cumbrian detective Daniel Skelgill, and his loyal lieutenants, long-suffering Londoner DS Leyton and local high-flyer DS Emma Jones. Set amidst the ancient landscapes of England’s Lake District, this expanding series of standalone murder mysteries has won acclaim across five continents, with over 1 million copies downloaded, from Australia to Japan and India, and from Brazil to Canada and the United States of America.