The Wood Beyond

Book excerpt: 'Hill's wit is the constant, ironic foil to his vision, and to call this a mere crime novel is to say Everest is a nice little hill' Frances Hegarty, Mail on Sunday. A ravaged wood, a man in uniform long dead -- this is not a World War One battlefield, but Wanwood House, a pharmaceutical research centre. Peter Pascoe attends his grandmother's funeral, and scattering her ashes leads him too into wartorn woods in search of his great-grandfather who fought and died in Passchendaele. Seeing the wood for the trees is the problem for Andy Dalziel when he finds himself fancying an animal rights activist, depite her possible complicity in a murderous assault and her appalling taste in whisky.