Before Shetland and Vera, Ann Cleeves wrote the Inspector Ramsay series featuring a talented, brilliant detective--now in print for the first time in the US.

For Dorothea Cassidy, Thursdays were special. Every week she would look forward to the one day she could call her own, a welcome respite from the routine duties of being a vicar's wife. But one Thursday in June would be her last--the day Dorothea Cassidy was strangled.

As the small town of Otterbridge prepares for its summer carnival, Inspector Stephen Ramsay begins a painstaking reconstruction of Dorothea's last hours. He soon discovers that she had taken on a number of deserving cases--a sick and lonely old woman, a disturbed adolescent, a compulsive gambler, a single mother with a violent boyfriend and a child in care--and even her close family have their secrets to hide. All these people are haunted, in one way or another, by Dorothea's goodness. But which of them could have possibly wanted her dead?

It is not until a second body is discovered that Ramsay starts to understand how Dorothea lived--and why she died. With the carnival festivities in full swing and dusk falling in Otterbridge, Ramsay's murder investigation reaches its chilling climax . . .