No case is too strange or too baffling for the policeman George Felse and his son, Dominic. Over 13 instalments and two decades, the Felse Investigations will take them from their home on the Welsh Borders to the southernmost tip of India.

Annet Beck is hauntingly beautiful, which worries her parents so much that they guard her as closely as a prisoner… until the rainy Thursday in October when she disappears. Annet is last seen vanishing over the crest of the eerie Hallowmount, a hill said to be the abode of witches. Five days later she mysteriously reappears, claiming that she was gone for only two hours.

Enchanted by her beauty, Annet's parents' lodger Tom Kenyon is determined to find the explanation for her disappearance: could it be deceit, amnesia or witchcraft? Tom's amateur investigations lead to nowhere until Detective Inspector George Felse finds cause to connect those missing five days with his enquiry into a death. The subsequent search takes the two men along a trail of betrayal, robbery and murder to a deadly confrontation among the ancient stones of Hallowmount…

Ellis Peters