Winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel, Cold Is the Grave—the eleventh installment—is the darkest and grittiest mystery yet in the bestselling Inspector Banks series.

In recent years, Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks's career has been stalled—and in fact, very nearly destroyed—by the petty animosities of his senior officer Chief Constable Jeremiah "Jimmy" Riddle. But when nude pictures of Riddle's runaway teenage daughter show up on a pornographic website, he turns to Banks for help.
Banks finds Emily Riddle in London, living in luxury with a dangerous gangster. At first refusing to go home, the girl later turns up at Banks's hotel, bruised and frightened, asking for his help. Soon she is back with her family in Yorkshire, and Banks's work appears to be done.
Months later, a cold and savage murder at an Eastvale nightclub shakes Banks to his core. The grim discoveries of the unfolding investigation draw him in a direction he dearly does not wish to go: into the past and private world of his most powerful nemesis, Chief Constable Riddle.