In a dry season: In Yorkshire, a dried water reservoir yields the skeleton of a woman who has been dead for fifty years. Inspector Banks learns the victim was a flirtatious World War II farm girl. The area was full of Yanks and her husband was at the front. Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks has the impossible task of identifying the victim, in a place that no longer exists and whose former residents are scattered to the winds. Anyone else might throw in the towel but Banks sets out to i=uncover the murky past buried beneath a flood of time.

A dedicated man: The body of a well-liked local historian is found half-buried under a drystone wall near the village of Helmthorpe, Swainsdale. Who on earth would want to kill such a thoughtful, dedicated man? Penny Cartwright, a beautiful folk singer with a mysterious past, a shady land-developer, Harry's editor and a local thriller writer are all suspects--and all are figures from Harry's previous, idyllic summers in the dale. A young girl, Sally Lumb, knows more than she lets on, and her knowledge could lead to danger. Inspector Banks's second case unearths disturbing secrets behind a bucolic facade.