Summary

The eighth in the Chief Inspector Wexford series'There must be many murder victims,' Chief Inspector Wexford said slowly, 'who meet their deaths without knowing in the least why they are to die.'When the body of a brutally beaten girl is found in a quarry during a hedonistic hippy festival at Sundays near Kingsmarkham, Wexford is first on the scene.

The eighth in the Chief Inspector Wexford series'There must be many murder victims,' Chief Inspector Wexford said slowly, 'who meet their deaths without knowing in the least why they are to die.'When the body of a brutally beaten girl is found in a quarry during a hedonistic hippy festival at Sundays near Kingsmarkham, Wexford is first on the scene. The victim's face has been pulped by the back-end of a bottle, but who, in this atmosphere of peace and love, could be capable of such violence?The body is that of local girl turned stripper Dawn Stonor, but it is the unlikely link between this ill-fated girl and the mysterious folk-singer Zeno Vedast that pique Wexford's interest.Through a web of lies and deceit Wexford uncovers a history of love and hate that began years earlier, and he realises that never has he witnessed a murder of such desperate passion...'Ruth Rendell is streets ahead' Sunday Telegraph