Looking Good Dead

Detective Superintendent Roy Grace of the Brighton police is handed the murder of a young woman whose body has been found butchered. The case pulls at him personally, because his own wife disappeared years ago and her fate has never been solved.

Elsewhere in the city, Tom Bryce picks up a disc someone has left on a train. He wants only to return it to its owner. That small decent act makes him the one eyewitness to the same killing.

When the killers learn that Tom has given a statement to Grace's team, they decide to act. Their plan is to murder the entire Bryce family, and for them it is a form of entertainment as much as a way to settle a score. Grace must solve the crime while keeping an innocent man and his family alive.

This is a crime thriller and a police procedural set in Brighton, told from the side of the detective and the targeted witness. The tone is dark, with a violent crime at the centre and a threat that closes in on an ordinary household.

It is the second book in the Roy Grace series, though the novels can be read in any order. A television series based on the books, Grace, stars John Simm.