NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley becomes embroiled in a case where nothing—and no one—is really what it seems in this “compelling [and] indefinitely engrossing” (People) novel from the renowned Inspector Lynley series.

Don’t miss the upcoming BritBox streaming series Lynley!

“Those who haven’t discovered Elizabeth George . . . should rush to read Playing for the Ashes.”—Us

When milkman Martin Snell makes his usual delivery to fifteenth-century Celandine Cottage one morning in Kent, he expects to be greeted by the cottage’s sensual and seductive tenant, Gabriella Patten—not by the ugly remains of a fire pointing to a murder. As Detective Inspector Thomas Lynley and his partner, Detective Sergeant Barbara Havers, begin their investigation, they soon find themselves in conflict with the local investigator—and discover ripples of shock spreading outward from the crime: from the victim’s husband, who claims indifference to her faithlessness, to the estranged wife of a member of the national cricket team, to an angry teenager, a former prostitute, and an ex-lover of Gabriella who has sworn her off to save his marriage.

As all of England, as well as the world of national cricket, reels from the crime, Lynley and Havers find themselves working on the most frustrating—and politically dangerous—case of their careers. And when in an act of desperation Lynley breaks department rules to flush out the killer, he risks his career with New Scotland Yard.