Susan Hill has been a professional writer for over fifty years. Her books have won awards and prizes including the Whitbread, the John Llewellyn Rhys and a Somerset Maugham, and have been shortlisted for the Booker. She was awarded a CBE in the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Honours. Her novels include Strange Meeting, I'm the King of the Castle, In the Springtime of the Year and A Kind Man. She has also published autobiographical works and collections of short stories as well as the Simon Serrailler series of crime novels. The play of her ghost story The Woman in Black has been running in London's West End since 1988. She has two adult daughters and lives in North Norfolk.

susanhill.org.uk

A little boy is snatched at the gate of his home while he waits for his lift to school.

An ex-con struggling to go straight finds himself drawn back into a criminal ring.

A young woman hovers between life and death.

Detective Chief Inspector Simon Serrailler is called in to investigate. But with dead-ends mounting up and time running out, has he taken on a case so complex it threatens to defeat him?

'All the ingredients for the perfect English crime novel' Daily Mail