No case is too strange or too baffling for the policeman George Felse and his son, Dominic. Over 13 instalments and two decades, the Felse Investigations will take them from their home on the Welsh Borders to the southernmost tip of India.

World-famous opera singer Maggie Tressider wakes up in a hospital after a car crash, haunted by the certainty that she has committed a murder some time in the past. Her doctor suggests that, with the help of a psychiatrist, she may be able to lay the nameless spectre to rest. But Maggie chooses a very different expert to help her unearth the secrets of her past.

Her commission launches private investigator Francis Killian on a hunt across Europe in search of a grave. But the trail also leads him to one Bunty Felse, former colleague of Maggie's, and wife of Inspector Felse. The successful end of Killian's search is only the beginning of a long pilgrimage – a journey that leads not only back into the past, but that takes Killian, Bunty and George to a remote corner of the Austrian alps where death awaits.

Ellis Peters