Nestling in undergrowth by the bank of the Thames, an old wartime pillbox, relic of the nation’s troubled past, finds itself at the heart of events that will haunt the idyllic village of Cardwell.

With last summer’s case still weighing against his name, Chief Inspector Dalliance arrives at the scene of a particularly unsettling murder committed inside the cold, lonely walls of this concrete fortress.

The hunt for an elusive killer sees Dalliance and DS Riley embroiled in a cultural clash between the pleasures of the flesh and a fierce moral righteousness simmering beneath the village’s placid surface. Can Dalliance thread his way through the dark world of sex parties and the innocent traditions of the local Morris Men to solve an increasingly convoluted case and save his reputation?

The Pillbox Murders is the second of Simon Rae’s Inspector Dalliance series, following Bodyline, in which Dalliance had to unravel the intricacies of a murder committed in full public view during a friendly cricket match, and offers the same blend of acute social observation, witty dialogue, ingenious plot twists – and Dalliance’s inscrutable powers of detection.