Ashley

The body of a disgraced college lecturer is found on an abandoned railway line. In the four years since his dismissal for sexual misconduct, he’d been living like a hermit. So where did he get the 5,000 pounds found in his pocket? Leading the investigation, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks begins to suspect that the victim's past may be connected to his death. Forty years ago the dead man attended a university that was a hotbed of militant protest and divisive, bitter politics. And as the seasoned detective well knows, some grudges are never forgotten - or forgiven.

A dedicated man is dead in the Yorkshire dales---a former university professor, wealthy historian, and archaeologist who loved his adopted village. It is a particularly heinous slaying, considering the esteem in which the victim, Harry Steadman, was held by his neighbors and colleagues---by everyone, it seems, except the one person who bludgeoned the life out of the respected scholar and left him half-buried in a farmer's field.

Everyone deserves a second chance – or at least that's what ex-vicar Lionel Lawrence believes when he decides to open up the old rectory to a stream of young offenders. Lionel only wants to help these poor souls, but his good deed quickly spirals into a deadly mix of blackmail and murder...

Alex Cross is back - and so is a raging and suicidal Gary Soneji. Out of prison and dying from the AIDS virus he contracted there, he will get revenge on Cross before he dies. In addition, we are introduced to a new pair of rivals whose paths cross that of Alex and Soneji. Thomas Augustine Pierce has been chasing his demon, Mr. Smith, since the savage murder of his fiancée. Mr. Smith is a unique monster, with actions toward his victims so insane - so unimaginable - that he is thought of as "not of the Earth".

FBI agent Rachel Walling finally gets the call she's dreaded for years, the one that tells her the Poet has surfaced. She has never forgotten the serial killer who wove lines of poetry in his hideous crimes - and apparently he has not forgotten her. Former LAPD detective Harry Bosch gets a call, too - from the widow of an old friend. Her husband's death seems natural, but his ties to the hunt for the Poet make Bosch dig deep.