Once again Minette Walters combines gripping psychological drama with memorable characters and a plot that twists and turns until the very last page.
In 1970, Harold Stamp, a retarded twenty year-old was convicted on disputed evidence and a retracted confession of brutally murdering his grandmother - the one person who understood and protected him. Less than three years later he was dead, driven to suicide by self-hatred and relentless bullying by other prisoners. A fate befitting a murderer, perhaps, but what if he were innocent?
Thirty years on, Jonathan Hughes, an anthropologist specialising in social stereotyping, comes across the case by accident. He finds alarming disparities in the evidence and has little doubt that Stamp's conviction was a terrible miscarriage of justice.
But how far is Hughes prepared to go in the search for justice? Is the forgotten story of one friendless young man compelling enough to make him leave his books and face his own demons? And with what result?
If Stamp didn't murder Grace Jefferies then somebody else did . . . and "sleeping dogs are best left alone . . ."
