Mystery fiction. Detective and mystery stories. The first body is chained to a stake: strangled, and stabbed, with a burning tyre around its neck. But is this a gangland execution or something much darker? Someone's leaving little knots of bones outside Detective Inspector Logan McRae's house, but he's got more pressing things to worry about. Rival drug gangs are fighting over product and territory; two teenage lovers are missing; someone's crippling...

Detective Sgt. Logan McRae, just back on the job in Aberdeen, Scotland, after recuperating from a knife wound received from a murder suspect, becomes caught up in the investigation of a serial killer who is targeting some of the youngest members of the community, and to make things even more difficult, someone inside the department is leaking confidential information to the press.