Changes

|title=Not in the Flesh

|author=Ruth Rendell

|date=August 2007

|isbn=978-0091920593

}}

A man and his dog were out hunting for truffles when the dog unearthed a human hand. The body, wrapped in a purple cotton sheet, had been there for more than a decade and Chief Inspector Wexford wasn't surprised that the post mortem couldn't tell him the cause of death. All he had to go on was a crack in one of the dead man's ribs. Identification is a major problem. A remarkable number of people - something like 500 a day nationwide - simply disappear. As if this isn't enough he's then faced with another body, found only a few yards away in the cellar of a disused cottage. With two unidentified bodies on their hands Wexford and Inspector Mike Burden are struggling.