As a teenager, Guy Curran leads a street gang and for three years is the lover of Leonora, whose middle-class background is a world away from his own. Leonora's family disapprove of her boyfriend. As the years pass, they drift apart. Guy becomes a successful business man and Leonora goes to college and then gets her first job. When they meet again, Leonora says there is now someone else in her life, but Guy can't accept this. His obsession deepens and turns into a murderous madness...

Part two. While attending a party with Celeste, Guy argues with Leonora's brother. He then asks Danny to kill him - but when he learns of an impending marriage, Guy realises he has targeted the wrong man.

Part three of three. After losing the fight with William, Guy decides to forget Leonora and make it up to Celeste, but a surprise invitation rekindles his old obsession and leads to tragedy.

A Kingsmarkham bypass is planned which will take congestion and air pollution out of the town but put tarmac and heavy traffic through a stretch of much-loved countryside. Feelings are running high on both sides. An attractive young German tourist has disappeared, and when her decomposing body is found it is not clear whether the crime is part of a conspiracy or sex-related. Wexford is about to become a grandfather and is struggling to cope with family life and to do his job at the same time. Meanwhile, Dora Wexford has joined the anti-bypass campaign. The murder case continues, and the anti-bypass campaign escalates. People begin to be kidnapped, and this is linked to a militant group of environmental extremists. Under pressure on all fronts, Wexford keeps his cool (even when his wife is kidnapped on the day his daughter gives birth) and pursues the law-breakers to the bitter end.

A girl's badly decomposed body is found, and cabdriver Stanley Trotter is suspected of murder.

n England, in June 1941, sixteen-year-old Jenny is evacuated from war-torn London to her Aunt Ella's house in rural Hampshire. The elderly Mrs Thorn is preoccupied with thoughts of her son, away fighting the Germans in North Africa, Uncle Daniel is dismal, and Aunt Ella is acting oddly. Then Jenny discovers a secret, with tragic results.

Quiet accountant Martin wins the lottery, but things take a turn for the worse when he meets Francesca, who is not what she seems.

Richard Brazier has a mental block about his abduction as an eight year old and is haunted by what may or may not have happened.