Devices and Desires

Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Featuring the famous Commander Adam Dalgliesh, Devices and Desires is a thrilling and insightfully crafted novel of fallible people caught in a net of secrets, ambitions, and schemes on a lonely stretch of Norfolk coastline. • Part of the bestselling mystery series that inspired Dalgliesh on Acorn TV “Taut.... Absorbing.... Better than her best.” —The New York Times Book Review “A masterful writer.... Devices and Desires seems to be that highly prized work–a terrific tale of suspense and detection that also delivers the satisfaction of a mainstream novel.” —The Wall Street Journal Commander Dalgliesh of Scotland Yard has just published a new book of poems and has taken a brief respite from publicity on the remote Larksoken headland on the Norfolk coast in a converted windmill left to him by his aunt. But he cannot so easily escape murder. A psychotic strangler of young women is at large in Norfolk, and getting nearer to Larksoken with every killing. And when Dalgliesh discovers the murdered body of the Acting Administrative Officer on the beach, he finds himself caught up in the passions and dangerous secrets of the headland community and in one of the most baffling murder cases of his career.