BREAKING FAITH

An eight-year-old corpse that won’t stay buried sparks shattering revelations for professional finder Brodie Farrell and her best friend, agoraphobic math tutor Daniel Hood (Reflections, 2003, etc.).

When you’re willing to spend £2.5 million for a new place to hang your hat, you’re entitled to be particular, and demon rock star Jared Fry, lead singer for the Souls for Satan, sends his manager, Eric Chandos, to Dimmock with a long list of requirements for Brodie to fulfill. One place—The Diligence, a former inn broken up into flats—seems so ideal that Brodie goes after it even though Jared’s never seen it and it isn’t for sale. Arriving to take possession, the rock prince sniffs that his new home doesn’t even have a swimming pool. But when local builder Norman Wilmslow begins to dig, he finds something extra: the body of an unidentifiable young woman. Is it Sasha Wade, who ran away from home in 1997, or Michelle Rollins, who’s supposed to have left her husband for a lorry driver? The ensuing complications will improbably but compellingly engulf not only Jared and Eric, but Daniel, Brodie and her lover, Det. Supt. Jack Deacon—especially after Brodie and Eric heat things up by falling into bed.

A brilliant example of how to bring a genre cliché to life, as Bannister uses the case of the long-dead woman to tighten the screws mercilessly on the detectives along with the suspects.