Singing the Sadness (Heftet (myke permer))

Reginald Hill was brought up in Cumbria, and has returned there after many years in Yorkshire. With his first crime novel, A Clubbable Woman, he was hailed as 'the crime novel's best hope' and twenty years on he has more than fulfilled that promise.

'Few writers in the genre today have Hill's gifts: formidable intelligence, quick humour, compassion and a prose style that blends elegance and grace' Sunday Times Joe Sixsmith is going west. But only as far as Wales where they keep a welcome in the hillside and the Boyling Corner Choir has been invited to the Llanffugiol Choral Festival. Trouble is, no one seems to have heard of Llanffugiol, and all they find on the hillside is a burning house with a mysterious woman trapped inside. Soon Joe is surrounded by a whole bevy of suspicious characters, not to mention the kind of criminous confusion that turns into utter chaos when confronted with the famous Sixsmith detection technique. Joe is no quitter, though. Doggedly, aided by little more than that instinct for truth which is his unique talent, he moves forward over the space of a single weekend to uncover crimes which have been buried for years.