Dead people - Ewart Hutton

DS Glyn Capaldi, half Welsh, half Italian, all maverick, returns in the CWA shortlisted series blowing fresh life into crime fiction

DS Glyn Capaldi, exiled to the big empty middle of Wales to atone for past sins in Cardiff, is called in to investigate a human skeleton that has been uncovered during the excavations for a wind farm in a remote valley. The body is missing its head and its hands. Identity erasure or a ritual killing? Glyn's assertion that there must be a local connection is overruled by his superiors, They believe that the body has been transported and dumped, a theory that gains support when additional bodies start to pile up. But Capaldi is unconvinced, and sets out to prove that there is someone within the local community capable of achieving the levels of cold and manipulative brutality that have been demonstrated.