This is the second of Graham Hurley's Portsmouth based Faraday and Winter novels. For Joe Faraday the funeral of a young colleague, killed in a head-on car smash, is a bitter end to another grim week. And now the seemingly untouchable DC Paul Winter, master of the scam, has been hurt in a way he could never have imagined - and his one instinct is to lash out. But there is no time for grief in a CID squad. A disgraced gynaecologist is missing and his caseload of maimed women is a muder-suspect list from hell. It's an impossible workload, and if that wasn't enough, the politicians and the suits are conspiring to make Faraday's life even harder...