Taking a break from his popular Dalziel & Pascoe series, Reginald Hill tells the story of The Woodcutter, a man who has an axe to grind after being wrongly imprisoned.
After years of protesting his innocence to anyone who would listen in prison, Wolf Hadda retreats in silence. Seven years later, prison psychiatrist Alva Ozigbo draws his story out of him and helps to organise his parole.
But what Alva doesn’t know is that there was a mysterious period in Wolf’s youth when he disappeared from home and was known to his employers as the Woodcutter. Now the Woodcutter is back, looking for the truth, and possibly revenge. Can Alva stop Wolf when she doesn’t really understand his past?