James Henry

It's November 1983 in Essex, and there are reasons to be cheerful. 'Uptown Girl' is at the top of the charts, Risky Business is raking it in at the box office and there are now four channels on the telly. However, social tensions are beginning to bubble beneath the surface....

DI Nick Lowry is called upon to investigate two deaths at Fox Farm, the home of eminent historian Christopher Cliff. The body in the farmhouse kitchen is Cliff himself, having seemingly taking his own life with an antique shotgun....

January 1983, Colchester CID. A new year brings new resolutions for Detective Inspector Nicholas Lowry....

Essex, February, 1991. The weather is biting cold. Everyone would rather be somewhere warmer, which is why it's a big surprise when a wanted drug smuggler, Bruce Hopkins, risks a return to his old haunts in Colchester after a decade long exile on the Costa del Sol....