RUSH OF BLOOD

Trouble in paradise follows three British couples back home.

Their sojourn at Pelican Palms on Siesta Key, Florida, should be nothing but relaxing for veteran visitors Ed and Susan Dunning as well as for novices Angela and Barry Finnegan and Marina Green and Dave Cullen. And if Ed seems to leer a little too much at shapely Marina, or Angela is too outgoing to suit gruff Barry, maybe it’s just the novelty of being far from home and away from the cares of daily life. It would all be quite a lark for the six of them if only Patti Lee Wilson’s not-quite-right teenage daughter didn’t just disappear in the middle of it. Once home, Angela invites the other two couples to dinner. But does Angela just want to keep up the relationship that seemed so close and easy in Florida? Or does she want to stir the pot that Amber-Marie Wilson’s disappearance set on the boil? As the others mull the consequences of transplanting an American-born friendship to home soil, Trainee Constable Jenny Quinlan develops a professional interest in the sixsome. Ever since Quinlan called Detective Jeffrey Gardner, he becomes convinced that the solution to the Wilson case is right under her nose in the U.K., and she will push the trans-Atlantic envelope as far as she can to prove it.

Billingham, creator of DI Tom Thorne (Die of Shame, 2016, etc.), provides a stand-alone that’s both creepy and shocking as he probes a friendship with complexities even the friends can’t fathom.