The Restless Dead is the fifth novel in writer Simon Beckett's Doctor David Hunter crime series.

Dr Hunter is back working in London and at a low ebb professionally, as he was the scapegoat for what went wrong in the last novel (The Calling of the Grave).

When a call comes out of the blue from a Detective Inspector in Essex about recovering a body from some tidal mudflats, Hunter jumps at the chance to be working for the police again.

The setting is the coast of Essex with an estuary and its many inlets and narrow waterways.

The bodies and the mysteries pile up with Hunter also getting too close to some of the major suspects and a possible resurgence of an old character at the end.