The twenty-eighth and final installment of the #1 bestselling Inspector Banks series by “the grand master of the genre” (Literary Review), Peter Robinson.

In November 1980, student Nick Hartley returns from a lecture to find his house full of police officers. As he discovers that his ex-girlfriend has been found murdered in a nearby park, and her new boyfriend is missing, he realizes two things in quick succession: he is undoubtedly a suspect as he has no convincing alibi, and he has his own suspicions as to what might have happened . . .

Decades later, in November 2019, an archaeologist unearths a skeleton that turns out to be far more contemporary than the Roman remains she is seeking. Detective Superintendent Alan Banks and his team are called in, and as an investigation into the find begins, the past and the present meet with devastating consequences.