Out here, in the quaint ceaseless calm of an English vil­lage, it is hard to imagine a life beyond. From the outside, everything seems to make sense. Everything has its place.

My friends are open and unsuspecting. There is none of the natural suspicion of the Argentinian. . . For me, it's unbeliev­able in a way.

For two decades after being forced to leave his native Argentina, Detective Chief Inspector Guillermo Downes has sought tranquility in the orderly life of the English Cotswolds. But violence can strike just as suddenly in the countryside as it can in Buenos Aires.

When the body of wealthy landowner Frank Hurst is found with a pitchfork through his neck, it brings back disturbing memories of former mysteries. Hurst's wife drowned in their swimming pool-an official accident, though many villagers have their doubts. And what about the two young girls who were abducted years before, with some possible links to Hurst that were never proven?

''It's something truly terrible to make someone disap­pear,'' Downes tells his partner. "Because the family never know, you see." Years ago he had promised the vanished girls' mothers to find their daughters, and as the ripples from Hurst's death spread through the village, there is fresh hope that he might finally make good on that promise, no matter what it costs the community or himself.

With the kind of insights into life in a seemingly peaceful village that made Broadchurch so powerful, James Marrison's The Drowning Ground introduces a terrific new voice in crime fiction.