All the Colours of Darkness (Inspector Banks, Bk. 18)

On a beautiful day in May in the Yorkshire Dales, a group of children are spending the last day of their half-term freedom swimming in the River Swain near Hindswell Woods. But when they find a man's body hanging from a tree, their idyllic day is shattered. With Alan Banks in London with his new girlfriend, the case falls to Annie Cabbot, who soon discovers the body is Mark Hardcastle - a well-liked and successful set designer for the Eastvale Theatre's new production of Othello.

After a shocking discovery, suicide is ruled out and Banks is called back from his vacation, finding himself plunged into a dark world where nothing is what it seems, secrets and deceit are the norm, and murder is the solution to nearly every problem. More and more the themes of Othello seem to haunt Banks: jealousy, betrayal, envy, ambition, greed, lust, and revenge - all the colours of darkness.