Leaving her new home in California for a trade union conference in Sheffield, Lindsay Gordon finds herself in the company of old friends – and enemies, including Tom Jack. When this unethical union leader is found dead, having catapulted out of Lindsay’s tenth-floor hotel room, she is taken in for questioning by the police.
Hoping to clear her name by finding the real killer, Lindsay searches among hundreds of unruly union delegates for a murderer who may have struck once before. Along the way she uncovers a seething cauldron of blackmail, corruption and abuse of power, all brought to the boil by her investigation.
Val McDermid grew up in a Scottish mining community and then read English at Oxford. She was a journalist for sixteen years, spending the last three as Northern Bureau Chief of a national Sunday tabloid. She is now a full-time writer and divides her time between Cheshire and Northumberland.