Book Description

London’s Inspector Wexford has two cases to solve—a murdered wife and a missing husband—in this double dose of a “masterful series” (Los Angeles Times). Now in one volume, two novels in “one of the best-written detective series in the genre’s history,” from a New York Times–bestselling and three-time Edgar Award–winning author (The Washington Post). The Veiled One: “Why on earth?” wonders London’s chief inspector Reginald Wexford when a sixtyish housewife is found garroted in a shopping mall garage, her body concealed under a velvet shroud. Before he can find the answer, he’s nearly killed himself—by a politically motivated car bombing targeting his activist daughter. With the inspector in the hospital, the case falls to his partner, Mike Burden. But when a strange mother and son are suspected, Burdon’s trail leads him down a very twisted road. An Unkindness of Ravens: When a neighbor’s husband vanishes, Chief Inspector Wexford suspects the cad most likely ran off with one of his girlfriends. However, there are a few nagging concerns, like the man’s suspicious letter of resignation and his abandoned car. And is it just a fluke that his disappearance coincides with a rash of stabbings—all straight through the heart, all with male victims? Behind the seemingly placid domesticity of Wexford’s Sussex neighbors, there’s a growing web of tangling secrets, double lives, and triple-crosses. An Edgar Award finalist, this is a “mystery of the highest order” (The New Yorker).