A bullet to the brain abruptly halted a terrified young woman s desperate flight. In her pocket is the name of a policeman whose own life was brutally invaded， mercilessly shaken， and very nearly erased -- a policeman who has since gone missing. The dead woman in the car had been running from something -- but she didn t run far or fast enough. Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot would like to question the man the victim was apparently racing to meet: Annie s superior -- and former lover -- Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks. But Banks has vanished into the anonymous chaos of the city， drawn into a mad whirl of greed， inhumanity， and death， by a frantic phone call from the brother he no longer knows. Banks is unaware that the threads connecting a sinister kidnapping with a savage slaying are as thick as rope . . . and long enough for a haunted and broken rogue cop to hang himself.