This compelling successor to Garnethill, which won the prestigious John Creasy Memorial Award for Best First Crime Novel in 1998, returns to Glasgow's grimmer precincts and the untidy life of Maureen O'Donnell. It also again pulls Maureen into a grisly case of murder-this time of Ann Harris, who had been nursing two broken ribs and reeking of alcohol when she'd visited Maureen's office at the women's shelter two weeks before her mutilated body was washed up by the Thames hundreds of miles away. Eager to quit Glasgow for a spell and escape her own problems, Maureen travels to London to search out the circumstances surrounding Ann's brutal death-and soon finds herself treacherously out of her depth. As Maureen strives in desperation to piece together Ann's last days in order to save herself from a similar fate, the suspense ratchets up and Denise Mina secures her place among the top-ranking writers of hard-boiled crime fiction at work today.