It was meant to be a harmless stag night prank. A few hours later, four of his best friends are dead and Michael Harrison has disappeared. With only three days to the wedding, Detective Superintendent Grace - a man haunted by the shadow of his own missing wife - is contacted by Michael's beautiful, distraught fiancee, Ashley Harper. Grace discovers that the one man who ought to know Michael Harrison's whereabouts is saying nothing. But then he has a lot to gain - more than anyone realizes. For one man's disaster is another man's fortune..."James has got the gift for turning mind-stretching subjects into novels that are irresistibly readable as well as utterly believable" - Robert Goddard. "A brilliant idea, superbly crafted. A terrific page-turner" - James Herbert. "A page-turner of a book with some terrifying twists...a very satisfying read" - George Baker, Inspector Wexford.

From Publishers Weekly

British author James's far-fetched but terrifying thriller is the first of a new series featuring Det. Supt. Roy Grace. Michael Harrison, a successful real estate developer with a penchant for practical jokes, gets a horrible taste of his own medicine. As a prank, four of his friends bury Michael alive in a coffin equipped with a breathing tube and a bottle of whiskey and leave him, ostensibly for a couple of hours. But when their van crashes head-on into a truck and three of them are killed (the fourth dies later "in hospital"), Michael is trapped. His cell phone doesn't work, but he does have a two-way radio whose companion is in the hands of Davey, a mentally challenged young man who finds the phone near the scene of the accident. Grace, a detective with a taste for the supernatural (he uses mediums to help him solve crimes), gets on the case and discovers just how devious Michael's friends have been. The "buried alive" trope is undeniably powerful, and Grace shows promise as a hero—but the crime and the plot surrounding Michael's plight are just too cumbersome and transparent to really engage the reader.
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From Booklist

James, the executive producer of the recent film adaptation of The Merchant of Venice, brings his filmic talent to a suspense tale that is almost excruciatingly easy to visualize. His opening premise is startlingly simple, that of the trickster tricked. Four friends celebrate one of their members' impending marriage by embarking on a pub crawl through several Sussex villages. What the groom-to-be doesn't realize is that his pals plan to play a payback prank on him by burying him alive (with a breathing tube and a walkie-talkie) for a couple hours. They leave the scene and are killed by an oncoming vehicle. Enter Detective Superintendent Roy Grace, assigned to investigate the missing-bridegroom case. Grace finds the case difficult, both because of the dearth of clues and because of his own wife's disappearance some years before. Achingly well plotted, with suspense that has no letup. Connie Fletcher
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