Police are baffled, for they can find no satisfactory motive to give any kind of clue as to the killer. The appearance of a second body, days later, sends the press into a frenzy, demanding answers to the gruesome mystery of the Christmas Killer. It takes the combined talents of all three original officers to delve deeply into their own pasts and insecurities to solve the killings - a journey fraught with uncomfortable emotional discoveries and hidden secrets. Only by confronting the half-truths and deceptions they have been hiding behind can they thwart a deranged killer's twisted intentions. Phil Lovesey's compelling novel combines the excitement of a murder mystery with a depth of psychological insight into the areas of child manipulation and psychopathy that will fascinate and haunt the reader.
Death Duties marks the debut of a remarkable and highly original novelist.
Phil Lovesey is the son of award-winning crime writer Peter Lovesey. After a career as London's laziest copywriter at a succession of the capital's most desperate advertising agencies, he turned to 'proper' writing in 1994. Death Duties is his first novel.