With his partner away on a honeymoon, Yorkshire detective Andrew Dalziel tries to beat the blues by taking a vacation of his own. But after getting caught in a torrential rain and running into a funeral procession, he winds up accompanying a crowd of upper-class mourners to a crumbling country house. Dalziel isn't known for his elegant manners, but he has bigger problems than not fitting in: The owner of the house has died under unusual circumstances,...

Mary Connon was a small-town femme fatale, eager to test her allure on any man between 6 and 60. When she's found dead in her own living room, her husband--the one bloke to whom she never blew a kiss--comes instantly under suspicion. But Andy Dalziel, the gloriously vulgar savant of the Mid-Yorkshire police force, has some other ideas, and all of them center on the local rugby club--the town's social center, and Mary Connon's preferred hunting ground....