It's tough being a Detective Senior Sergeant in the Sex Crimes unit. DSS Stevie Hooper is fighting to balance the seamier side of being a cop with her role as a mother-and her latest case is not going to make it any easier. It starts with a deserted house, an abandoned baby, and an elderly neighbor who has the answers but cannot speak. Then the body of a woman turns up in the river with its limbs bound and a shotgun wound to the head. Soon DSS Hooper is on the trail of a human trafficking ring and discovers a ruthless group with international connections that has at its rotten heart a disregard for all human life.

Felicity Young is the author of A Certain Malice, An Easeful Death, and Harum Scarum.