The merchant's house - Kate Ellis

DS Wesley Peterson, newly arrived in the West Country town of Tradmouth, has his hands full when a child goes missing and a young woman is brutally murdered on a lonely cliff path. Then his old friend, archaeologist Neil Watson, unearths the skeletons of a strangled woman and a new born baby in the cellar of an ancient merchant's house nearby.

As the investigation continues, Wesley begins to suspect that these deaths, centuries apart, may be linked by age-old motives of jealousy, a sexual obsession and desperate longing. And the pressure is on if he is going to prevent a further tragedy...

Kate Ellis's wonderfully addictive series of West Country set crime novels feature Wesley Peterson, one of Devon's first black detectives.