Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill

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Seven years after the disappearance of her policeman husband — and just before she marries another copper — glamorous Gina Wolfe receives a newspaper cutting showing what appears to be her missing spouse in Yorkshire. Her new partner contacts Andy Dalziel to see if the superintendent, slowly regaining his considerable powers after spending much of The Death of Dalziel in a coma, can solve the mystery. The plot soon thickens thanks to a brotherand-sister pair of thugs, an investigative journalist and a smarmy Tory MP whose father is a black East End gangster made good.

Midnight Fugue is a masterly performance. It exploits both meanings of the word "fugue" — a musical composition and a form of amnesia — and all the action takes place between 8am and midnight. The plot contains at least three twists but, as always, the greatest pleasure lies in the humorous interaction between the machosexual Dalziel and his more enlightened colleagues. And it's good to see such words as "eidolon" and "episematic" used in what will deservedly be one of this summer's big bestsellers.

Synopsis by Foyles.co.uk

The highly anticipated return of Dalziel and Pascoe, the hugely popular police duo and stars of the long-running BBC TV series, in a new psychological thriller. It starts with a phone call to Superintendent Dalziel from an old friend asking for help. But where it ends is a very different story. Gina Wolfe has come to Mid-Yorkshire in search of her missing husband, believed dead. Her fiance, Commander Mick Purdy of the Met, thinks Dalziel should be able to take care of the job. What none of them realize is how events set in motion decades ago will come to a violent head on this otherwise ordinary summer's day. A Welsh tabloid journalist senses the story he's been chasing for years may have finally landed in his lap. A Tory MP's secretary suspects her boss's father has an unsavoury history that could taint his prime ministerial ambitions. The ruthless entrepreneur in question sends two henchmen out to make sure the past stays in the past. And the lethal pair dispatched have some awkward secrets of their own. Four stories, two mismatched detectives trying to figure it all out, and 24 hours in which to do it: Dalziel and Pascoe are about to learn the hard way exactly just how much difference a day makes!