It's a case tailor-made for the Peculiar Crimes Unit. A lonely hearts
killer is targeting middle-aged women at some of England's most
well-known pubs--including one torn down eighty years ago. What's more,
Arthur Bryant happened to see one of the victims only moments before her
death at the pub that doesn't exist. Indeed, this case is littered with
clues that defy everything the veteran detectives know about the habits
of serial killers, the methodology of crime, and the odds of making an
arrest. Now, with the public on the verge of panic and their superiors
determined to shut the PCU down for good, Detectives Bryant and May must
rise to the occasion in defense of two great English traditions--the pub
and the Peculiar Crimes Unit.
That's easier said than done. A lost funeral urn, the eighteenth-century
mystic Emanuel Swedenborg, the Knights Templars, the secret history of
pubs, and the discovery of an astounding religious relic may be enough
to convince one of the pair to take back his resignation letter. But
with Bryant consulting a memory specialist and May encountering a brush
with mortality, do the Peculiar Crimes Unit's two living legends have
enough life left to stop a murderous conspiracy...and a deadly cupid
targeting one of their own.