A FROZEN STIFF — In life he was Leo Martindale, the dissolute son of one of rustic Sutton-in-the-Weald's most genteel first families. Now he is a snow-covered corpse lying outside the seventeenth-century ancestral home he'd fled nearly twenty-fire years before. It looks like Leo was the victim of a hit and run. But was it accidental or was this particular black sheep deliberately slaughtered?

DETECTIVE INSPECTOR LUKE THANET

Inspector Luke Thanet has a sneaking suspicion that it was the latter. For Leo's sudden homecoming seems to have been an unpleasant shock to too many people -- including the victim's own sister, who doesn't relish sharing the wealth. But what had Martindale done to provoke the wrath of the entire town? Thanet is stunned to discover that nearly everyone in Leo's boyhood village had a long-standing grudge against him -- and ample opportunity to commit the crime. As the inspector probes deeper into the secret life of the dead man, he comes up against a chilling conspiracy of silence. Just who are the locals protecting ... and why?