Some secrets keep perfectly well for decades, until somebody starts digging. In these four novels, the past keeps account and the detectives who reopen old files soon find that the guilty have had years to prepare a welcome. From a Brighton storm drain to a Los Angeles alley, the evidence has waited patiently. Answers cost something here - occasionally a life. Old sins cast the longest shadows!
Peter James, 'Dead Man's Footsteps' - When a woman's skeleton turns up in a Brighton storm drain, Roy Grace follows the trail to a failing businessman who used the chaos of 9/11 to vanish from his own life.
Ian Rankin, 'The Hanging Garden' - Rebus is handed the thankless case of an elderly Edinburgh man accused of wartime atrocities, just as a gang war erupts across the city and his own daughter is left fighting for her life.
Michael Connelly, 'The Black Box' - Twenty years after a Danish photojournalist was shot dead during the 1992 Los Angeles riots, a single bullet casing sends Harry Bosch back into the case nobody else wanted solved.
Peter May, 'Blowback' - Forensic scientist Enzo Macleod heads to the Auvergne to crack the unsolved murder of a celebrated three-star chef, killed amid rumours that his restaurant was about to lose a Michelin star.