Reaper - Steven Dunne

"Things can't go on the way they are. On every estate, law-abiding residents are thinking it. In every school, teachers are thinking it. On every street corner, policemen are thinking it. If we could just remove this family, this pupil, this yob from the face of the earth, the world would truly be a better place. Nobody would miss them. Nobody would mourn for them. If they could just cease to exist and the misery they cause die with them. No fuss, no mess. What a thing." Detective Inspector Damen Brook has seen it all before - so much that he has fled from London to the backwater of Derby leaving behind his marriage, his child and very nearly his sanity, to wind down his once promising career in the peace of the Peak District. But one winter's night, Brook is confronted by a killer he hunted many years before - The Reaper - a man who slaughters families in their homes then disappears without trace. Now the search must begin again. To find his killer, Brook must discover why The Reaper has followed him to his new life in Derby, why he's started killing again and what, if anything, connects the butchered families? In the process, Brook must face his own demons by revisiting the previous investigation and confronting a past that damaged him and destroyed his family.