"Though she guarded her past from everyone, Caroline Hartley had spent time on every level of Hell over the hard course of her twenty-six years. But no devil she encountered there was worse than the one she let into her house a few days before Christmas--the one who plunged a kitchen knife into her naked body over and over again. A small town's holiday spirits have been brutally shaken by the savage slaughter of a beautiful enigma. And now, to find her killer, Chief Inspector Alan Banks must return to the sordid shadows he once patrolled, leaping back into a nightmare world of flesh, sin, and depravity, where the only real escape is. . . death."

Another fine installment in the Inspector Banks series. Although the cover blurb detailed in my registration entry on this book is a tad overblown, the mystery is more rewarding than the hyperbolic come-on. Robinson is improving in his craft as the series progresses and I look forward to each subsequent tale.