A body is discovered at the edge of a Yorkshire rock outcrop popular with ramblers and dog walkers. And once again it is DCI Ed Swift who has the job of trying to piece together what happened.

No one seems to know what was going on in Christian Hartwell’s life in the days before his corpse was found bruised and scarred at the foot of Fellbeck Crag. Was he in trouble he couldn’t get out of? Was his death a suicide? Or was it something much more sinister?

Ruth Hartwell, the victim’s adoptive mother, is unable to shed any light on her son’s final days. Her daughter Harriet has a strange tale from the past to tell Swift... but one without clear links to her brother’s death.

The plot for Harrogate novelist Angela Dracup’s latest Ed Swift crime novel was inspired by one of her own favourite paths – though she has changed its name in her book.

“Along this path is a spectacular, unprotected danger spot,” she says. “I have occasionally ventured to the vertiginous edge and thought how easy it would be for someone to come up behind me, give me a push, and send me to oblivion. And gradually a story began to unfold in my head, using that one simple push as the trigger for a new murder mystery.”

There is nothing flashy about Angela’s crime fiction. Her novels are more traditional whodunits than out-and-out thrillers – with the emphasis very much on suspense and psychology. This is more or less what you’d expect from a former educational psychologist – and it only makes her books all the more gripping.