Notes
Detective Sergeant Logan MacRae has been bumped to D.I. Roberta Steel's "Screw-up Squad" after a raid he led on a warehouse rumored to be full of stolen property ended with no arrests and one officer critically injured. The backstabbing, limelight-stealing, laziest D.I. on Aberdeen's police force, Steel's team is made up of the "no-hopers," the most worthless or inexperienced members of the homicide department, and Logan will do anything to prove he doesn't belong there. Including working overtime on two baffling the murder by arson of six people, and the beating to death of a prostitute down by the docks, not a high priority compared to the fire. At least not until another prostitute ends up dead. Although both cases seem simple on the surface---turns out the fire's victims are part of a drug dealer's inner circle, and what fate is to be expected for working girls in Aberdeen's red-light district? --- in Stuart MacBride's hands, what's going on in this rainy Scottish city is bound to be much more complicated than it appears. A detailed authenticity combines with a dark Scottish sense of humor and a lively cast of characters in MacBride's unputdownable second novel, confirming his status as a rising star of crime fiction.