A Medieval painting of the last judgement - commonly known as a `doom' - is found in a barn close to where Neil Watson is excavating the ruins of a manor house. The body of a dead former rock star is found on the same farmer's land which gives DI Wesley Peterson an excuse to visit his friend Neil and see how he is getting on with his excavations. A teenage boy - son of the farmer on whose land the rock star's body was discovered - disappears. Wesley is concerned he may have seen the murderer and so could be in danger.
This is a complicated plot with plenty of twists and turns to mislead both the police and the reader before all is resolved. I thought the intertwining of the distant past, the not so distant past and the present was well done and never laboured. I like the police characters and the way their characters are developing during this series. Wesley's long suffering wife, Pamela, is well done too. While there are some tensions between the police characters they mainly get on well and work together.
I would recommend this series to anyone who likes their crime novels to have an element of history in them and the series can be read out of order though it is interesting to see the relationships developing if you read the books in sequence.
