[The Staunton and Wyndsor Series 01] • S&W01 - the Hunters

The twisting lanes flanked by tall trees that lead to the bland charms of a Suffolk village are seldom disturbed, even by tourists, but now there is the discovery of a young woman's body.

It is 1975 and there are no sophisticated aids to detection to help Scotland Yard’s Detective Superintendent Bob Staunton and Detective Inspector Leo Windsor when they are sent to a time-warped East Anglian village to investigate the murder of a local girl whose body has been abandoned in a ditch by a country road.

Local loyalties and suspicion of outsiders are in full play when the long-experienced Bob Staunton and his younger, more sophisticated colleague Leo Wyndsor of the Scotland Yard murder squad arrive in Bacton Ford, They are faced by silence from the inhabitants who prove to be as devious and complex, with as many vices, including an interest in ancestral rites, as could be found in any urban community.

This is a place where old ways still hold sway, where animosities are pursued through the generations and where outsiders are viewed with the utmost suspicion. Here the murderer lives, embedded in this introverted society. As the investigation progresses and we get an insight into his life, it soon becomes apparent that he will kill again unless Staunton and Windsor can stop him.

On several occasions as the search proceeds the reader is aware that he is looking at the murderer - without the possibility of identification - and becomes increasingly certain that the murderer must kill again unless Staunton and Wyndsor can achieve a breakthrough.

A widely experienced writer in other media, the author of this impressive novel has created the vivid realities of life, and death, at Bacton Ford and introduced the reader to two memorable detectives.

The Hunters is the first of a series of police procedural murder mysteries written in the 1970s, in the classic roman policier style. These books were previously published worldwide in hard- and paperback editions and are now being offered as eBooks for the first time.

‘To follow… the brilliantly inspired tracking of Hill’s two detectives is a joy, apart from the brainteasing pleasure of accepting the author’s challenge to identify the murderer.’

London Evening News

‘Brilliantly described police procedure… Unputdownable.’

The Observer

‘…an acute professionalism. What is even better, it has the holding qualities of a rock-loving limpet.’

Eric Hiscock in The Bookseller

‘…a masterly and entertaining beginning. Not a suspicion of cardboard in the characters, and a story with a hook-hold from which there is no escape. More please of the down-to-earth Chief Superintendent Staunton and the efficient and amorous Detective Inspector Wyndsor.’

Victor Canning