Four brilliant investigators. Four cases where the dead speak louder than the living. From the snow-covered streets of Montreal to the fog-haunted moors of 1950s Brighton, the volcanic plateaux of rural France, and the dark heart of New York, this collection celebrates crime fiction at its most forensically rigorous. Within these pages, solutions lie not in confession but in evidence - in bones, in crime scenes, in the cold logic of the scientific mind brought to bear on the darkest of human acts.
Elly Griffiths, 'Smoke and Mirrors' - Two children vanish from a seaside town, drawing DI Stephens back into uneasy partnership with wartime magician Max Mephisto.
Kathy Reichs, '206 Bones' - Tempe wakes bound and injured with no memory of how she got there, and a botched case threatens everything she has built.
Peter May, 'Blowback' - Seven years after a celebrated chef was murdered, Enzo Macleod reopens the case and finds the world of haute cuisine as ruthless as any crime scene.
Patricia Cornwell, 'From Potter's Field' - A woman is found posed in Central Park at Christmas, and every detail tells Scarpetta that Gault is back.
