A fast-moving, stunning new standalone psychological thriller - from the award-winning author of the Dalziel and Pascoe series.
Wolf Hadda's life has been a fairy tale. From humble origins as a Cumbrian woodcutter's son, he has risen to be a hugely successful entrepreneur, knighted for services to commerce, happily married to the girl of his dreams.
Then early one morning, there comes a loud knocking at his door and the fairy tale ends. Within months he is universally reviled as a convicted fraudster and paedophile, abandoned by his friends, divorced by his wife, cut off from his daughter, and his company Woodcutter Enterprises has collapsed. All his protestations of innocence can do is guarantee he will serve the whole of his lengthy sentence.
Then, after seven years, prison psychiatrist Alva Ozigbo makes a breakthrough. Wolf begins to talk. And soon, under her guidance, he is released on parole, and returns to his rundown family house in rural Cumbria, apparently seeking nothing more than a quiet life in complete seclusion.
But there is a part of Wolf's background that only a very few know anything about, a few early unaccounted for years when he disappeared from home and was known to those who employed him as the Woodcutter.
And the Woodcutter is looking for the truth, and with the truth, revenge.
Alva Ozigbo is also still seeking for the truth. Innocent or guilty, he is clearly damaged goods, and the more convinced Alva becomes of his innocence, the greater her concern that he may be about to do something that will put him back inside forever....