"This is Weston-super-Mare, Love. If we downed tools every time an empty hotel caught fire we'd never get any work done, would we?" A derelict hotel damaged by fire - business as usual for the Weston-super-Mare police, except that this hotel has a corpse in the bar, charred beyond recognition. Detective Sergeant Mary Miller leads the investigation, and soon finds herself unpicking a web of rivalries involving old money, seedy lap dancing clubs, a work of artistic genius and the fight to save Weston's collapsing Birnbeck Pier. In the middle of all this is amateur sleuth Michael Slade, now an official Constabulary Technical Advisor, who as always seems to know more than he's letting on. And who is the mystery woman, living on Weston's once-notorious Bournville Estate and operating under two names in different parts of town? "Death in the Deauville" is the sequel to "The Bodies in the Beach, " the hit thriller about life and death in an English West Country seaside resort.